Contact:

Kathleen McNeilly
Phone: 703-761-1274
Email: kathleenm@mersinc.org

Vienna, VA – At the company’s recent Strategic Planning Conference, MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.) announced hitting five million loan registrations on the MERS ® System.

“Reaching five million loans is a huge achievement, especially considering we hit the one million mark only eighteen months ago” said R.K. Arnold, MERS President and CEO. “We registered over two million loans in five months. MERS is clearly an industry standard.”

Loan registrations are averaging 13,000 per day. Arnold said he expects daily registrations to increase even more because Fleet National Bank and GMAC Home Equity recently integrated themselves on the MERS® System.

MERS is an electronic loan registry created by the real estate finance industry to eliminate paper assignments when trading mortgage loans. MERS members record MERS as mortgagee (as nominee for the lender) in the county land records. Then they register their loans on the MERS® System and electronically track changes in servicing and beneficial ownership rights over the life of the loan.

Loans registered with MERS are inoculated against future assignments because MERS remains the nominal mortgagee no matter how often servicing is traded between MERS members. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, VA, FHA, Ginnie Mae, the Federal Home Loan Bank MPF® Program, California and New York housing authorities, and all major Wall Street rating agencies have approved MERS.

“The MERS® System is a very efficient, effective tool for the mortgage industry,” said Arnold. “It not only saves our members at least $22 per loan by eliminating assignments, it also helps cut down on the time and potential loss of documents associated with generating assignments.”