News Source: Optimal Blue
Company continues its streak of aggressive product innovation and no-cost feature additions
SAN DIEGO, Calif., Feb. 4, 2025 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Optimal Blue today unveiled a series of new products and features, alongside its major Ask Obi AI assistant announcement, at its Summit user conference in San Diego. These innovation announcements underscore the company’s commitment to delivering high-impact solutions, at no additional cost, that tackle real-world challenges and help lenders maximize profitability.
Image caption: Optimal Blue.
“Today more than ever, lenders need software and data solutions that empower them to make smarter business decisions and operate with efficiency, and Optimal Blue is demonstrating our commitment to helping them navigate and thrive in this complex and highly regulated environment,” said Erin Wester, chief product officer at Optimal Blue. “The products and features announced at our Optimal Blue Summit are not simply software – they are solutions designed specifically to help lenders maximize their profitability, built based on real feedback gathered from our hundreds of clients. These innovations are a testament to Optimal Blue’s state-of-the-art product, research and development, and engineering teams that go to work for the benefit of our clients every day.”
Major product enhancements announced during the Summit include:
ORIGINATOR ASSISTANT
Originator Assistant is an AI-powered tool in the Optimal Blue PPE that identifies alternate loan scenarios that can produce more competitive pricing, helping loan officers have more strategic discussions with borrowers to win more business. Originator Assistant further amplifies Optimal Blue’s Scenario Optimizer tool, which was introduced last fall to allow clients to run up to three pricing scenarios side-by-side. Originator Assistant examines applicable adjustments, margins, and other price components, and identifies where small loan setup/parameter changes could positively impact pricing. Fully embedded within a loan officer’s workflow, Originator Assistant runs behind-the-scenes as part of every scenario search.
RULES OPTIMIZER
Rules Optimizer is a feature in the Optimal Blue PPE that allows lenders to streamline the rule creation process by creating a single rule and applying it to multiple investor relationships. This gives lenders flexibility to take advantage of both one-to-one and one-to-many investor relationships or custom rule writing. Rules Optimizer also offers change history tracking so users can easily see updated rules and investors/products at a granular level, as well as the ability to schedule run periods in advance to support specials and limited-time promotions. Rules Optimizer is built on top of the Optimal Blue PPE’s system-maintained ratesheet content, which is regarded for its industry-leading accuracy.
RATESHEET TOOL
The Ratesheet Tool is a feature that connects front-end pricing (i.e., origination) with back-end pricing (i.e., secondary) to allow lenders to generate ratesheet pricing with a known margin, accurately. Linking to both the Optimal Blue PPE and the CompassEdge hedging and loan trading platform, the Ratesheet Tool allows secondary users to access a back-end price and deliver a more accurate execution price to originators. The Ratesheet Tool offers a new way for lenders to generate ratesheets with their own proprietary pricing, with precision and accuracy from secondary to origination. This solution showcases a distinct benefit lenders can only realize from working with Optimal Blue, given the company’s end-to-end capital markets platform encompassing both product and pricing and hedging and trading.
CONFIRM ASSISTANT
Confirm Assistant is a feature in the CompassEdge hedging and loan trading platform that reduces both the time and potential for manual errors associated with reading TBA trade confirmation files. The tool uses AI to read files from broker-dealers, parsing the documents into usable formats. With Confirm Assistant, users simply drag and drop confirmation files and approve them without having to manually key in data. This benefits users by reducing manual, time-consuming steps and freeing up staff to focus on more complex trades.
MORTGAGE RATE FUTURES
First announced in November 2024, Optimal Blue has partnered with CME Group, the world’s leading derivatives marketplace, to provide the Optimal Blue Mortgage Market Index (OBMMI) as the foundation for CME Group’s new Mortgage Rate futures. Launched on Jan. 13, 2025, Mortgage Rate futures are cash-settled contracts that provide direct exposure to the latest primary mortgage rate available to borrowers, giving mortgage originators an additional instrument to hedge pipeline and servicing risk. The contracts are the first-ever to be based on the 30-Year Fixed Rate Conforming OBMMI, which is designed for IOSCO compliance and tracks real-time rate lock data from more than one-third of U.S. residential mortgage originations.
SOLUTION CENTER
The Solution Center is a partner marketplace within Optimal Blue’s Comergence platform that expands revenue opportunities for mortgage lenders and investors and third-party partners and vendors. The Solution Center provides a platform where users can sell products and services through a two-sided marketplace of vetted integration partners. It supports more streamlined vendor communication, and the Solution Center Academy provides a resource for asynchronous training, helping investors promote strategic relationships, as well as required trainings, for their third-party originators.
ASK OBI
Finally, as announced earlier today, Ask Obi is Optimal Blue’s new standalone AI assistant that gives executives instant, interactive access to granular data insights and trends to improve business decisions. Ask Obi gives lenders the power to view their operations holistically with data aggregation across Optimal Blue’s comprehensive capital markets platform, reaching from loan origination data through hedging and trading.
Optimal Blue’s Summit user conference features multi-track sessions exploring AI and automation trends, profitability strategies, market insights, and more, led by leading economists, policymakers, and lenders, as well as the company’s own subject matter experts.
About Optimal Blue:
Optimal Blue effectively bridges the primary and secondary mortgage markets to deliver the industry’s only end-to-end capital markets platform. The company helps lenders of all sizes and scopes maximize profitability and operate efficiently so they can help American borrowers achieve the dream of homeownership. Through innovative technology, a network of interconnectivity, rich data insights, and expertise gathered over more than 20 years, Optimal Blue is an experienced partner that, in any market environment, allows lenders to optimize their advantage from pricing accuracy to margin protection, and every step in between. To learn more, visit https://OptimalBlue.com/.
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