Key points:

• Mortech, Polly, Lender Price, Optimal Blue, and Loansifter all offer some level of application programming interface (API) functionality.
• Lending institutions can use these mortgage pricing engine APIs to deliver strong borrower experiences, including live rate tables, rate alert emails, calculators, and personalized rate dashboards. 
• Optimal Blue leads the pack in terms of the quantity and caliber of its enterprise-grade APIs.
• Loansifter offers the least robust API functionality, but we can still help you display its rates to your customers through purpose-built integrations.

The software game has changed. It used to be that you needed to find one turnkey solution to fulfill a need. You needed a round peg for your round hole, so to speak. But application program interfaces (APIs) have changed everything. 

Now, if a software doesn’t have built-in functionality to do what you want, you can probably use an API. Essentially, you can take a square peg, then add an API to smooth out its edges to fit into your round hole.

For mortgage lending institutions, APIs can be a powerful tool for improving borrower experiences. Let’s say you want to give borrowers real-time rate visibility. You can probably use an API to connect your pricing engine to a rate table on your website. 

The big takeaway here: If you want to make the most of your mortgage pricing engine, APIs can unlock a lot of benefits. Then, the question is: Which PPE has the best APIs if you’re trying to deliver a top-tier borrower experience? Let’s weigh Polly, Lender Price, Mortech, Optimal Blue, and Loansifter. 

Comparing mortgage pricing engine APIs

All five of these leading pricing engines provide APIs. But that doesn’t mean they’re all created equal. Some have more robust API ecosystems, while others are more developer-friendly. 

Let’s start with a high-level overview of what’s on offer for these mortgage pricing engine APIs.

Key APIs to deliver better borrower experiences

Lender Price, Mortech, Polly, Optimal Blue, and Optimal Blue’s broker solution Loansifter all leverage APIs. The question is how to best deploy them to improve borrower experiences. We have a few ideas. All of the options we’re discussing here are available through APIs with all five of the PPEs we’ve highlighted. 

Rate transparency

Today’s borrowers want to know what’s available to them. They’re used to online shopping, where it’s easy to see what things cost and compare offers across vendors. 

In fact, a lot of consumers today will skip over lenders who don’t offer rate transparency. Your competitors, especially nationwide lenders, advertise their rates on their websites. You need to do the same to stay in the game. 

Fortunately, APIs can help you connect your pricing engine to website embeds displaying live rates, quoting tools, and more. All five of these platforms offer mortgage pricing engine APIs to help you keep potential borrowers informed about what’s available. 

Some of the strongest rate-focused APIs includes ones that power:

• Live rate tables: Make it easy for borrowers to see what pricing looks like across a variety of loan scenarios. By displaying rates for the different loan products and terms you offer, you help people see what you can offer them. 
• Rate quoting: Knowing what’s generally available is helpful. Knowing what they can actually get is entirely another. By connecting your PPE to a live rate quoting tool, you help people get near-instant access to a bespoke quote based on their unique criteria. Better still, you can set this up to operate as a lead workflow. In addition to handing over pricing data like their desired loan amount and zip code, you can build in fields where consumers give you their contact information. This way, the potential borrower gets a better idea of what they can afford. And you get a way to capture and qualify them as a lead. 
• Personalized rate dashboards: To keep leads engaged, you can leverage mortgage pricing engine APIs to offer customized rate dashboards. Then, people can see pricing across all their potential loan scenarios — and you can track how they engage with each option you present. This way, your loan officers have data-backed intel to help nudge that lead forward. 

Borrower education

People feel positively toward companies they feel have their best interests at heart. By empowering them with information to help them make smart decisions about their home loan, you curry favor. 

You can, for example, use an API to connect your pricing engine to mortgage calculators. This lets people crunch the numbers themselves. They can play with different down payment amounts or loan terms to find what’s best for them.

Similarly, you can tap an API to set up automated rate alert emails. This way, you keep borrowers informed about market movement. And you do that without creating extra work for your loan officers or marketing team. 

Easy access

You can use mortgage pricing engine APIs to meet people where they’re at. An AI SMS texting tool can pull info from your pricing engine to answer questions about different loan scenarios for leads, for example. And it makes that information available from the convenience of the person’s mobile phone. 

Or you can set up an API to connect your PPE to your website chatbot. That enables you to offer live quotes straight from the chat window. 

The easier you make it for people to get the information they want, the more you improve the borrower experience. 

Getting the most out of mortgage pricing engine APIs with RateFlow

We have technology to help you make all of the above a reality. We offer RateFlow, an API we designed to help lenders connect their pricing engine to their website and other marketing tools. To see what it could do to help you deliver better borrower experiences, book a demo with us today.