Black Knight, Inc. announced today that Bay Federal Credit Union, the largest member-owned financial institution in Santa Cruz County, Calif., has agreed to implement the cloud-based Empower loan origination system (LOS) and its suite of integrated lending solutions for its retail and home equity lending operations. Bay Federal will be able to leverage Black Knight's origination technology and data ecosystem for advanced digital capabilities to drive more operational efficiency and gain deeper business insights to support the credit union's performance goals.

"It's important for us to maximize the abilities of our lean, talented staff by giving them access to advanced tools and automation that will elevate speed, accuracy and digital access," said Michael Smith, Vice President, Mortgage Loan Operations, Bay Federal Credit Union. "We were impressed with the Empower system's ability to support both our traditional and unique lending products. The LOS will effortlessly scale to the ongoing growth we expect in our loan operations."

Empower is a high-performance, cloud-based LOS that automates repetitive processing tasks based on the lender's configurations, reducing the need for human intervention. Referred to as "lights-out processing," this advanced technology actively monitors the system for any data changes during the loan process and triggers a separate work item when an exception occurs, which alerts the user that additional reviews are needed. The Empower system will provide Bay Federal with the capabilities to originate more new loans, enhance loan quality, decrease turn times, support compliance and investor requirements, improve member satisfaction and much more.

Bay Federal has also selected numerous Black Knight origination solutions that are seamlessly integrated with the Empower system. These innovative solutions include: an industry-leading product and pricing engine; machine-learning technology for document classification and indexing; a comprehensive fee service to help mitigate fee cures; actionable intelligence that helps deliver the right information in the loan process to the right people so they know which steps to take next; robust property tax closing disclosures; access to a secure standards-based platform of service providers where services, loan-level data and transaction history can be captured, shared, stored and archived; automated, lender-controlled compliance validation testing; and a mortgage-specific customer relationship management (CRM) tool to help provide a member-for-life experience.

"By delivering our Empower LOS with an integrated system bundle, Bay Federal will enjoy a proven, all-inclusive tech stack," said Rich Gagliano, president, Black Knight Origination Technologies. "Now is the perfect time to modernize the credit union's loan operations with these innovative solutions, and we are ready to build a strong, collaborative relationship with Bay Federal to support its growth, decrease the overall costs associated with origination, and strengthen the service capabilities they provide to their members."