Alliance Mortgage Selects Portellus to Implement Broker Portal, AUS, LOS and BRMS for Wholesale and Retail Lending Channels.

IRVINE, Calif. -- Next-Generation Technology Built on Service-Oriented Architecture to Add Robust Functionality, Increase Enterprise Flexibility; Four Month Implementation Touted

Portellus Inc., a leading provider of technology tools and services for the financial services industry, today announced that Alliance Mortgage Banking Corp. has signed with the company to provide point-of-sale automated underwriting for Alliance's broker network and to implement Portellus' Web-based loan origination system (LOS) and Business Rules Management System (BRMS). Collectively, the solutions will help Alliance's broker network and retail branches to close more loans through front end automation while enabling lender operations to become more efficient in the back office.

"In today's complex mortgage technology landscape, executives must critically evaluate and effectively balance the value of vendors with cutting-edge, best-in-class technology solutions and proven client implementations with that of the more established, yet older legacy providers," said Andreas Markou, executive vice president of Alliance Mortgage Banking Corp.

"After closely evaluating Portellus' technology and business model, it became abundantly clear that their technical team has taken a great deal of time to develop a suite of next-generation products and has married those products with a very customer-centric approach to delivering successful implementations in a timely fashion," continued Markou.

Alliance's use of Portellus' decisioning platform extends pre-qualification; product pricing and eligibility; credit/debt management; and true automated underwriting approvals directly to the point-of-sale via a broker portal and Web-based retail application. Using Alliance's unique underwriting guidelines, the AUS automates the complex analysis necessary to mitigate the risk of underwriting non-conforming, non-prime loans where underwriting is more involved. Additionally, Alliance's internal administrative staff will utilize Portellus' LOS, which seamlessly interfaces with the decisioning output from its AUS to execute rapid and accurate loan processing. The solution is unique because it offers the bulk of the LOS's robust decisioning and loan scenario capabilities at the point-of-sale for Alliance's LO's and brokers.

Both Portellus' broker portal and retail application empower Alliance's users with the necessary point-of-sale decisioning tools that enable them to quickly qualify borrowers for best-fit products, pull credit and return precision-based underwriting approvals complete with conditions and exceptions. Brokers and loan officers will also have up-to-date status and visibility of their entire pipeline throughout the loan's lifecycle to funding.

Driving the intelligence behind the entire solution is Portellus' BRMS, which serves as the brains for the LOS and AUS. One of the most powerful features of the BRMS is its ability to drive the use of specific lender rules across disparate enterprise applications and the empowerment of business users to easily maintain and make changes to those rules without the need to involve IT personnel or costly outside programmers. The ease of change management the BRMS delivers saves time, reduces costs and brings new products and pricing to market in hours -- not weeks or months, thus creating significant competitive advantages. Further, the BRMS utilizes a central rules repository that enables rule changes to be executed across all pertinent business functions and applications. This facilitates a "write once; use everywhere" approach that eliminates the time consuming, cumbersome effort of duplicating changes in multiple areas.

"Portellus' BRMS is leading the way with its rapid change management system over traditional rules management systems, which are often difficult to maintain without the help of technical programming assistance," said Skip Hulme, director of lending solutions at Portellus Inc. "In today's marketplace, the bulk of BRMS's are either IDE-based or hard-coded systems, which are onerous, time consuming and expensive to manage. Additionally, many vendors selling these systems tout them as having ease of change management capabilities when, in fact, much or all of the underlying logic is hard-coded but is merely disguised as a rules-based change management system."

Portellus' entire solution is built on an open mortgage solutions framework that enables the use of service-oriented architecture for easy integration and communication with disparate applications and third-party vendor services. Company officials at Portellus say the implementation will take under four months.

About Portellus

Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Portellus Inc. is a leader in the application of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for the mortgage banking and insurance industries. The company's Decision Management Solution, Business Rules Management System, Mortgage Solutions Framework, and Rating and Underwriting Engine seamlessly integrate with existing systems to enable clients to gain competitive advantages, reduce costs, increase profitability, mitigate risk and quickly launch new products/pricing to penetrate new markets. For more information, visit www.portellus.com or call 949-250-9600.

About Alliance Mortgage

Headquartered in Levittown, N.Y., Alliance Mortgage Banking Corporation is a national wholesale and retail mortgage banker. The company focuses on Alt-A, non-conforming, non-prime and government loans. Alliance Mortgage is a member of the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. For more information, call 516-520-4100 or visit www.applynow123.com.