Black Knight will integrate Wolters Kluwer‘s eNote and eVault capabilities in order to cut lenders’ costs per transaction and secure their clients’ electronically signed assets.
The two firms signed an agreement to combine Wolters Kluwer’s eNote and eVault solutions with Expedite Close — Black Knight’s digital closing solution — as the final pieces to connect all the tools lenders need to perform digital closings and complete digital mortgages, Black Knight said Thursday.
Lenders need five key capabilities to close digitally: eSign, eClosing, eNotarization, eNote and eVaulting.
Black Knight already offers eSign, eClosing and remote online notarization (RON) solutions, but the integration will close the loop on delivering a completely digital mortgage process, Rich Gagliano, president of originations technologies at Black Knight, said in a statement.
“With this new integration, lenders will benefit from cost savings per transaction along with a seamless process that flows data from the Empower loan origination system into our end-to-end digital close solution before being securely stored in the eVault,” Gagliano said.
Instead of paper promissory notes, the borrower’s promise to pay is recorded via an eNote — the key document signed at closing — and an original is stored securely in the eVault.
Using the eVault helps clients securely manage their electronically signed assets throughout the entire post-execution loan life cycle. The solution’s document repository allows users to tightly control and track access, status changes and retention policies of the original documents.
The repository also provides protection and compliance using digital tamper seals, as well as a detailed audit trail and reporting functionalities.
Black Knight previously collaborated with Wolters Kluwer to adopt its mortgage document generation technology into Black Knight’s Empower in 2020.
The partnership aimed to allow for “a simpler and more complete contracting process while helping to reduce the complexity and effort that lenders experience when engaging in separate contracts with each service provider,” Wolters Kluwer said at the time.
Black Knight, which has been preparing to get acquired by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), has been rolling out new features for servicers to increase outreach to homeowners.
New features include the integration of its digital servicing platform and its Surefire CRM — a mortgage-specific marketing automation and content solution introduced in October. Servicing Digital, offered as an app or web design, enables customers to access their loan- and home-related information.
The mortgage data vendor is also rumored to be exploring the sale of Empower, which received the green light from ICE. Black Knight has been soliciting interest from potential buyers of Empower in a deal that would be valued at about $400 million, Reuters reported this month.