by: Elizabeth Lee
Although MERS® Quality Assurance requirements are not that complex, they are time consuming. For those of us that love to read Quality Assurance Manuals for tedious procedural updates to implement, not a major problem. But many of us are busy working and looking for trusted colleagues to break trail on those issues and report back. If I may be so bold…a brief data dump incoming. Or, skip this blog and simply call me on how to meet MERS® QA requirements.
MERSCORP, by way of consent order, is now tracking and monitoring all of its members’ procedures and all loan data. So much for the gentlemen’s agreement to comply. Don’t blame MERS for the changes. The #2011-044 Consent Order passed down from the Feds is the reason for the shakedown. And with good reason. The information submitted to the MERS® System has proven to be…well…ahhem…not accurate.
In the effort of tracking and monitoring, MERSCORP is requiring all MERS® Members, Lite and General, to submit a revised QA plan for 2011 and annually thereafter. This would include the expectation that Members do what is in the QA plan and update it as needed. For the lucky General Member, you will also need to address the Annual Report, to include data reconciliation requirements. Titan tackled the data reconciliation with software, and built our MERS® Compliance suite of services to meet the conditions. Sassy.
For those servicers who have not responded, the 2011 deadline of December 31st has come and gone. The good news is…an extension has been granted through Tuesday, January 24th. Thankfully, there is room for noted exceptions on behalf of the MERS® member. But, exception or not, the enormous operational task of data reconciliation for each MIN with a minimum 17 data fields quickly becomes an exponential headache. The ability to track, monitor and clear the discrepancies without technological help is even more daunting.
Oh, one last thing, MERSCORP is rolling out a new version of their Quality Assurance Procedures, release 21.0 on February 27th. Registration and transfer time frames will be shortened, as well as adding additional fields per MIN to include an Owner Occupied and Loan Pool Identification fields. So… time to roll up your sleeves and get to reconciling or to make it a hassle free experience, call me to discuss your best course of action that won’t have you doing data entry through August.
