MISMO® and PRIA Release IPR Disclosure Draft of Business Requirements for eRecording Electronic Recordable Instruments

MISMO, the not-for-profit data standards subsidiary of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), and the Property Records Industry Association (PRIA) today published the IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) Disclosure Draft of a Business Requirements Document which addresses and describes the business requirements for the eRecording of electronic recordable instruments in common electronic document formats such as MISMO SMART Doc®, eSigned PDF and Adobe Intelligent Document Format, and Microsoft® Word with embedded-XML. The document, entitled eRecording Electronic Document Formatted Recordable Instruments, also includes business function descriptions, a process flow diagram and project assumptions, constraints, and dependencies.

The 30-day IPR Disclosure draft is published in accordance with MISMO and PRIA IPR policies to allow for industry comment and disclosure prior to publishing Version 1.0 Final. This is the first joint publication of the two organizations since forming an alliance in November 2005. The goal of the alliance is to exchange and incorporate MISMO and PRIA standards for use within commercial and residential electronic mortgage transactions. The alliance benefits MISMO and PRIA members, the real estate finance industry, and the general public, by fostering cooperation in the development and provision of consistent standards for electronic mortgage transactions.

'While most of today's electronic recordations are performed from scanning paper documents, the need for eRecording of electronic documents will certainly grow across recording jurisdictions nationally as eMortgage adoption continues to grow,' said Harry Gardner, MBA's Vice President of Industry Technology and head of MISMO. 'eRecording provides many benefits to mortgage lenders, county recorders and closing agents, improving their ability to manage document volumes with fewer errors, faster turnaround and high accuracy.'

The Business Requirements Document covers six major objectives:

· Preparing electronic instruments so that they are eRecordable;

· Uploading or transmitting electronic instruments to eClosing systems and various other platforms;

· Executing recordable electronic instruments on eClosing systems and various other platforms;

· Delivering recordable instruments electronically from eClosing systems to various eRecording applications and systems in public land records offices;

· eRecording electronic instruments including fee and payment information;

· Enabling the return of eRecorded (or rejected) electronic instruments to the eClosing platforms, or the retrieval by the eClosing platforms of eRecorded (or rejected) electronic instruments.

'The paper provides the industry with a tangible outline for implementing eRecording procedures throughout electronic document transactions,' said Carmelo Bramante, PRIA's Co-Chair of eRecording Business & Technical Requirements Work Group. 'As electronic transactions at closing gain industry-wide momentum, lenders, recorders, title and closing agents will see even more benefits to the eRecording of electronic documents.'

To download a copy of the joint MISMO-PRIA document go to http://www.mismo.org/SpecificationsAndGuidance/eMortgageSpecificatons.htm or http://www.pria.us/Papers/licensedpapers/dtd.htm.

The review period runs through April 26, 2008.

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ABOUT MBA

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) is the national association representing the real estate finance industry, an industry that employs more than 370,000 people in virtually every community in the country. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the association works to ensure the continued strength of the nation's residential and commercial real estate markets; to expand homeownership and extend access to affordable housing to all Americans. MBA promotes fair and ethical lending practices and fosters professional excellence among real estate finance employees through a wide range of educational programs and a variety of publications. Its membership of over 2,400 companies includes all elements of real estate finance: mortgage companies, mortgage brokers, commercial banks, thrifts, Wall Street conduits, life insurance companies and others in the mortgage lending field. For additional information, visit MBA's Web site: www.mortgagebankers.org.

ABOUT MISMO

MISMO, a not-for-profit subsidiary of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), develops data transfer protocols that span the $14.4 trillion residential and commercial real estate finance industry. MISMO standards help reduce costs, streamline processes, improve accuracy, increase data transparency, and boost investor confidence in mortgages as an asset class. MISMO coordinates the development and maintenance of Internet-based Extensible Markup Language (XML) real estate finance specifications and electronic mortgage guidelines through a voluntary, open and vendor-neutral process, and its workgroups include more than 1,000 individual participants from over 160 subscribing organizations representing all sectors of the residential and commercial industry: lenders, originators, servicers, investors, government-sponsored enterprises, technology vendors, multiservice providers, credit reporting agencies, insurance firms, tax services and law firms. MISMO is a registered trademark of the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization, Inc. For more information on MISMO, visit www.mismo.org.

ABOUT PRIA

The Property Records Industry Association is a coalition of government and business participants of the property records industry, cooperating to formulate positions on issues of common interest. PRIA works to identify problems, opportunities and solutions that will make property records systems more efficient, effective and responsive to the public. PRIA also works to identify areas of consensus within the industry, leading to recommendations for national standards pertaining to recordable documents. For more information on PRIA, visit www.pria.us.