Our latest release (the final update to Mercury Network in 2020) offers new features and improvements throughout the platform, including new options for automated order documents, new criteria for automating your appraisal review, and several changes that complete our project to retire the XSites. We’re also getting appraisers ready to receive payments for appraisal fees directly to their checking account. Read on to see the highlights and check the release notes for complete details.
New options for automating engagement letters and RFPs
We received your feedback (thank you!) that it would be useful to include additional order information in the templates used automatically create engagement letters and RFPs. To enable this, you can now add more order fields to those templates. The newly added fields include:
Borrower name
Borrower contact method (one or both methods)
Appointment contact type
Appointment contact name
Appointment contact method (one or both methods)
Other Ref #
As always, we appreciate hearing these suggestions from you, and hope these new options streamline your workflow as intended. Let us know!
Added flexibility for automating your appraisal review
A lot of lenders use the CU score from the Submission Summary Report (SSR) to help determine what level of review an appraisal should receive. In Mercury Network, a popular option has been to route appraisals with a CU score equal to or higher than x to a more stringent review (when x = a configurable CU score). That way, appraisals with higher risk factors can be routed to a closer review, perhaps by more experienced staff. Check out this recent case study to see how Sierra Pacific Mortgage uses this option to double their underwriters’ productivity.
With this release, you now have the option to route appraisals with a CU score equal to or lower than x. This is based on feedback from some who want to route lower-risk appraisals to a faster or more cursory review.
To enable this for all orders in your account, click Preferences, Appraisal Quality Management. There, you can use the Preferences section to configure your automation to suit your workflow. The new option is in the drop-down menu when you check Only automatically order when the CR score is… By choosing less you can route lower-risk appraisals for automated appraisal review if that suits your lending program. For even more granular control, this same option is available in Client Groups.
Mercury Network Payments
We have begun onboarding appraisers for Mercury Network Payments ahead of the full launch of this solution in 2021. With Mercury Network Payments, appraisers will receive payments from their clients for completed appraisal work directly in their bank account. Since this payment is triggered by an order's status, there's no need to wait for someone to manually "cut a check" or snail-mail delivery. Plus, appraisers will always have a digital record of payments received so account reconciliation is a snap. By enrolling now, appraisers will be ready to receive these payments when the full suite of features is launched early in 2021.
Appraisers: Ready to enroll?
For appraisers who want to enroll or learn more, here's more info:Quick walkthrough (get enrolled in less than 2 minutes)
Appraiser who enroll before 12/15/2020 are automatically entered to win an iPad!
Lenders: Looking for more information about Mercury Network Payments?
This feature won't roll out to lenders until early 2021, but there's more information about this upcoming feature here:
Retiring “XSites”
Over the past 2 releases, we mentioned the steps we are taking towards retiring XSites, which used the soon-to-be-deprecated Adobe Flash. That day is here!
As of today, you will no longer be able to access your 'XSite' (found at domainname.vmpxsites.com). Many of you probably never visited the site unless you needed to update permissions related to the VMP Client order or to update your company info displayed on client invoices. We previously moved the permissions into Mercury Network so you can access them more easily. Now, we have made updates throughout Mercury Network to reflect the removal of XSites and ensure there is no disruption to your or your client's workflow.
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Most of these changes don’t affect the way Mercury Network functions; they’re simply clarifying updates to the interface. Below are some examples of these changes, and you can check the release notes for further details.
In Preferences, VMP XSites has changed to VMP Client Order Setup.
Company info displayed on your automatic invoice was moved from step 2 of the XSite Wizard into the VMP Client order's Automatic Invoice Settings.
The term XSite has been renamed across Mercury Network; for example, instead of seeing View XSite order you will now see View Client order.
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In addition to these changes, the old version of the Make a Payment page has been completely retired. Everyone is now using the new version which is ADA color compliant, includes mobile capabilities and uses improved security features.