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Minnesota Housing Creates a Web-Based Loan Management System With ILOG's BRMS, Reducing Loan Eligibility Process to 15 Minutes

SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 18 PRNewswire-FirstCall — ILOG(R) (Nasdaq: ILOG; Euronext: ILO, ISIN: FR0004042364) today announced that Minnesota Housing, a state agency committed to financing affordable housing opportunities for low and moderate-income Minnesota residents, is using ILOG JRules(R), a key offering in ILOG's Business Rule Management System (BRMS) product line, to automate its interest rate commitment, loan eligibility and loan approval processes. With the new system, Minnesota Housing has been able to offer its lending partners access to its loan programs 24/7. With ILOG JRules as a key part of a new, more efficient Web-based system, Minnesota Housing has significantly reduced the amount of time and paper in its loan commitment and loan purchase processes as confirmation is instantaneous through the Minnesota Housing Web-based system, which was co-developed by Housing and Development Software (HDS).

Using ILOG JRules, the Web-based system instantly notifies lenders whether or not there are funds available to process loan commitments. The system also notifies lenders of missing loan file documents, which provides an increased level of customer service and is much more efficient. Another benefit of such automation is the reduction of time spent on training staff and lending partners.

Before using the new Web-based system, Minnesota Housing used legacy systems that were 20+ years old, consisting of manual, paper-intensive processes for both Minnesota Housing staff and its lending partners. For example, lending partners had to call or fax Minnesota Housing to check the status of their loans. These systems were difficult to maintain and staff intensive, which resulted in higher annual costs.

However, Minnesota Housing knew that a new system needed to be agile enough to respond to the changing needs of its lending community, process loan applications more efficiently, communicate with lending partners, provide information via the Web and comply with changes from the State Legislature, federal government or its Board.

To meet these challenges, Minnesota Housing selected ILOG JRules and is using the technology in three processes:

— The Program Selection engine offers lending partners applicable programs based on initial loan submission data. — The Loan Compliance engine ensures that a loan being submitted for commitment or approval complies with Minnesota Housing's loan eligibility requirements. — The Data Control engine controls the information presented to partners browsing the Web application interface.

"Prior to our new system, we were processing loans manually by fax, phone, email and loan-package delivery between the agency and our lending partners," said Mike Haley, Assistant Commissioner, Minnesota Housing. "Now, due to the flexibility of the rules engine, our staff is able to monitor, respond and make changes to loan programs quickly, saving our lending partners and us both time and money. By using ILOG JRules, our technology is now able to support Minnesota Housing's initiatives and enable Minnesotans to buy and occupy a home as soon as the lender can close the loan."

In addition to reducing the loan eligibility and approval processing time, lender partners now have access to a business-to-business Web-based system that allows them to gain commitment and approval of mortgage loans to be purchased by Minnesota Housing. The Web-based system uses business rules engines to provide the 250 lending partners — comprising of nearly 1,500 users — the ability to enter, update, and submit loans for various lending programs, view funds availability and check loan status. The new system also enables the staff at Minnesota Housing to quickly access and change its business rules as program policies, legislative directives or the market demand. As an added benefit, the system has provided the agency an increased ability to more quickly and accurately access its data as well as enable more in depth analysis of not only the number and type of loans processed but the individual loan characteristics.

ILOG has consistently built on its history of product innovation to make it one of the industry's leading providers of business rule management system software. Forrester Research has recognized ILOG as a rules platform market leader, including the leader in rules platforms for Java. Customers of ILOG's award-winning BRMS products include eBay, Equifax, Grupo Santander, Visa, Vodafone, Zurich, and many other leading Global 2000 companies and governments worldwide. ILOG's business rule management system (BRMS) product line includes ILOG JRules, ILOG Rules for .NET(R), ILOG Rules for Cobol(R) and ILOG Rules (C++)(R). To learn more about BRMS, please visit http://www.ilog.com/products/businessrules.

About ILOG

ILOG delivers software and services that empower customers to make better decisions faster and manage change and complexity. Over 3,000 corporations and more than 465 leading software vendors rely on ILOG's market-leading business rule management system (BRMS), supply chain planning and scheduling applications, as well as its optimization and visualization software components, to achieve dramatic returns on investment, create market-defining products and services, and sharpen their competitive edge. ILOG was founded in 1987 and employs more than 850 people worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.ilog.com.

ILOG and ILOG JRules are registered trademarks of ILOG S.A. and ILOG, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE ILOG

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