The new Dodd Frank regulations are causing community banks and credit unions to rethink mortgage banking as they struggle to identify loans that will please both the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The CFPB's goal is to eliminate risk that a consumer will not be able to meet the terms a financial agreement. The OCC wants the bank to do everything in their power to eliminate or significantly reduce risk. To that end, the OCC prefers a bank achieves risk reduction by making loans with adjustable interest rates to protect the bank when rates adjust. The CFPB sees these adjustable rate loans as too risky for the consumer and regulates the bank's ability to make these loans. To use the vernacular, community banks and credit unions are "damned if they do and damned if they don't" when it comes to interest income from mortgage loans.

When we started talking to bankers about MyLoans™, everyone liked the idea of patient financing, a closer relationship with medical providers and a new interest revenue channel. Everyone also brought up the fact that a large volume of medium to low dollar loans required a "low-touch" model. Each bank has a different set of systems for core processing, document imaging and loan servicing so we were challenged to come up with a model that would serve everyone.

It's been hot here in Colorado, so we've been staying nice and cool in the air conditioned office working on the v.13.2 release of MyLoans™! Okay, so maybe there were a few vacations taken here and there, but rest assured that the MyLoans™ team has been hard at work ensuring our customers can provide the industry's best patient financing to all of their medical customers. This release features a more streamlined workflow for processing loans, signing documents and requesting funding. We know that MyLoans™ works for banks because it's fast, easy to use and requires very little overhead. So in this release we focused on making it faster, easier and even more streamlined. Now banks can setup a medical provider user, and the new user can get help or self-train on the interface without even contacting the bank. We standardized all the language and made the agreement documents more bulletproof, which reduces the number of times a medical provider contacts the bank and increases the bank's profit per loan.

Less than a year after sketching out the concept, Harland Financial Solutions has already delivered on a mobile signing application to complete the loop on paperless lending. During the opening presentation on corporate direction at the Connections 2013 conference, Harland Financial Solutions featured the mobile electronic signing solution created by Epic River. As the banks in attendance know well, the tablet and smartphone boom in recent years has created equal parts challenge and opportunity. One of the strong opportunities Harland identified is the ability of a tablet to remove the desk from between the banker and the bank's customer. With ProSign Mobile Signing the account manager or loan officer can sit next to the customer in a more comfortable and consultative setting. The banker can then initiate a new loan or account on an iOS, Android or Windows 8 tablet and then hand the tablet to the customer for document review and signing. Completed documents are emailed the customer and loaded into the bank's content management system with no need for paper, pens...or a desk.

Priding itself on being a resourceful community-banking network across eight states, the Bank of Colorado regards itself for its old-fashioned, neighborly customs of greeting customers by name and answering telephone calls in person. So when one of the Grand Junction branches began to get more inquiries for loans related to medical procedures, the Bank of Colorado began to identify a need that wasn't being met by area banks. Customers needed assistance in either covering deductible and copay costs that were paid directly to the insurance company or paying for orthodontic work, fertility treatments, lasik eye surgery, and other medical-related expenses not typically covered by most insurance plans. Identifying the Problem The Bank of Colorado quickly identified significant issues that families face with funding a substantial medical need that is either subject to a high deductible or not covered by insurance. Medical-specific credit cards typically offer a brief time period of 0% interest, but high interest rates kick in just a few months later, making the overall cost even more significant for patients. Those in need typically find themselves paying for their medical services months and even years after the procedure was completed, regardless of the outcome. And these continued payments prevent patients from continuing much needed follow-up care. Additionally, these high interest rate cards charge the medical providers with percentage-based fees, which can elevate the medical costs charged to patients in an effort to recoup the fees.

Epic River has completed a full-scale upgrade to our entire software development process. Our code storage, automated build, quality assurance and product deployment environments have all completed an on-time and on-budget migration. This is an enormous step forward for Epic River and our customers. We have always embraced distributed code storage and automated build environments, but in July we integrated Atlassian's Bamboo for Continuous Build Environment, Amazon Web Services and Bitbucket source code repository to further reduce our customer's time to market. "These new technologies together with Epic River's software development process will allow us to adapt to the ever-changing market conditions as well as the needs of our partners and customers," said Epic River President Steve Wood.

Epic River is pleased to announce that it has been retained by Catalyst, the leading nonprofit organization working to expand opportunities for women and business. The work Epic River will deliver focuses on improving the Catalyst Census data warehouse. The customized system provides the ability to import, enter and manage data related to top companies, executive officers and boards of directors in the United States and Canada.

Accounting software continues to evolve to meet the needs of its customers, and the hospitality industry is no different. When hotels discovered that their existing software did not offer the ability to schedule daily payments via an automated clearing house (ACH), they sought out the consulting firm, Kaleo Technology. Kaleo was able to bundle several software packages and a manual process to solve the immediate problem, but there came a time when Kaleo was ready to enhance the ACH payment software with a more automated process. Thus, a partnership between Kaleo and Epic River was formed, and the PayLink module was born. PayLink is a fully automated payment processing system and a perfect combination of Kaleo's deep understanding of the hotel industry's needs along with Epic River's ability to accelerate the process of software development.

Have you ever left an orthodontic office trying to convince yourself that character building might just be an okay alternative for Timmy rather than figuring out a way to cover the cost of braces for the next three years? Because really, there has got to be a limited number of jokes that one can create with protruding teeth as the topic. Or maybe it's that elective surgery not covered by insurance that you truly require. Whatever the need, the ability to apply for and secure patient financing for medical services has been an arduous process...until now. With the introduction of MyLoans™ by Epic River, consumer loans to patients of medical professionals just got easier, much quicker, and more trustworthy. MyLoans™ allows banks to empower medical providers to create financing quotes and loan agreements directly for their patients right in the hospital or doctor's office. Instead of pointing patients to high-interest credit cards, providers can offer patients an accurate quote in minutes, which lessens the wait time before medical services can begin.

(Free-Press-Release.com) April 22, 2009 -- April 7, 2009 Chesapeake, VA - The National Association of Residential Property Managers (www.NARPM.org) is pleased to announce the successful launch of Rental Home Professionals (www.RentalHomePros.com), which functions like a multiple listing service for rental homes. In addition to marketing the rental homes, like several other internet listing services, www.RentalHomePros.com will also gather information on transactions so that professional managers can track data on vacancy rates, average days on market, average rental rates per bedroom or per square foot, and several other factors that will help property managers do a better job of maximizing a landlord’s return on investment.