On its own, a good mortgage product pricing engine (PPE) gives lenders a strong tool to wield. But why stop there? When you can pull that pricing information into features like a live rate table on your website, you power lead generation. 

For that to work, you need the software of the PPE to talk to the software of your website. And that’s where application programming interfaces (APIs) come into play. An API can act as the middleman, pulling data from your pricing engine into customer-facing tools.

To get a better idea of the rich potential here, it helps to understand your API options from your PPE of choice. With that in mind, we’re going to look at how PPE APIs work with Optimal Blue, Loansifter, and Mortech. 

Refresher: What is a PPE API? And what can it do for you?

APIs are sets of rules that let two pieces of individual software interact with each other. 

Your product pricing engine already uses APIs. An application programming interface is probably what enables your pricing engine to connect to your loan origination software (LOS), for example. 

But that’s not the extent of what APIs can do. Consumers today expect instant access to the information they want. And a PPE API gives you the plate on which to deliver exactly that.  

Mortgage pricing engine APIs are the keys that unlock customer-facing options for your PPE. This allows you to embed pricing options directly into tools on your website and marketing emails, from calculators to rate tables. 

Better still, your PPE API can help you offer truly personalized rate information to leads in real time. If you use an API to connect your pricing engine to individualized customer rate dashboards, for example, you let the lead play with pricing their own loan scenario.

A key here is to keep yourself in the mix. You don’t necessarily want leads to have access to all of your powerful pricing information without anything in return. Establish a tit for tat. They can input their email address in exchange for a personalized rate quote, for example. 

Now that you have a better feel for how this connection works, let’s look at individual APIs from some of today’s leading PPEs.

PPE API #1: Optimal Blue

Optimal Blue is one of the biggest PPEs in the game. It’s also an API-first platform. Today, thousands of lenders rely on its APIs to support their businesses and drive closed loans and revenue.

It’s worth noting that Optimal Blue’s product and pricing APIs are complete with secondary marketing functionality. To support your team, the PPE’s API also offers automated loan creation and locking, complete with post-lock management and lock desk workflows. 

On the lead generation side, you can tap the platform’s APIs to deliver real-time eligibility and pricing information personalized to each individual lead — without any of your LOs lifting a finger. When the tools on your site connect straight to Optimal Blue, leads can see what’s on offer for them and play with their own pricing scenarios. By the time they get in touch with your team, they should feel informed and empowered.

Because Optimal Blue is such a large PPE, it’s probably not surprising to learn that it offers a wide range of ready-made integrations powered by APIs. You can access a Digital Marketplace Developer Portal that lets you tap into its industry-leading API suite. 

PPE API #2: Loansifter 

Loansifter started out on its own, but it’s now under the Optimal Blue umbrella. In 2022, under that banner, Loansifter rolled out broad API capabilities. 

Specifically geared toward mortgage brokers, Loansifter includes API functionality supported by the Optimal Blue API suite. But on the Loansifter side, those APIs are tooled to support brokers’ needs. 

Loansifter aggregates pricing from more than 120 investors. That makes it possible for brokers to showcase eligibility and pricing data to leads. At the same time, because it offers a direct connection, Loansifter’s API functionality eliminates the need for manual data transfer. By removing the risk of human error, it helps brokers reduce risk and protect their bottom line. 

PPE API #3: Mortech

Mortech’s API capabilities let you connect the pricing engine’s data to your website, point-of-sale solutions, and even apps your team uses or provides for customers. It powers:

• Online rate quoting
• Fully fleshed-out rate tables
• Marketing campaigns

With Mortech’s API, for example, you can embed rate tiles into your drip email campaigns to continually keep leads updated.

Mortech highlights a couple of value-adds with its API suite. First, setup should be relatively streamlined. The PPE says it can take as little as two weeks to get onboarded and have your API established.

Secondly, Mortech is System and Organization Controls 2 (SOC2®) compliant. That’s a data protection standard established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. And that means you can rest easy knowing data exchanged through Mortech APIs will be secure. 

RateFlow: Combine it all in one place

You can figure out all of these APIs individually. Many of the PPE APIs we just went over can power rate tables or custom quotes. But if you want to unlock an easy way to connect your PPE to a broad range of customer facing tools, consider our solution, RateFlow. 

RateFlow integrates with APIs from all of the leading PPEs, including Optimal Blue, Loansifter, and Mortech. That gives you a way to pull eligibility and pricing information to marketing features like:

• Instant rate quote tools on your website or fed from third-party rate tables
• Rate tables on your website that can personalize showcased rates based on lead criteria
• Customer rate dashboards complete with activity tracking so your loan officers can see what’s most interesting to leads
• Mortgage calculators to let leads play with different pricing scenarios on their own
• Rate alert emails, including alerts that trigger when past borrowers reach their ideal rate for a refinance

You can use RateFlow to harness your PPE’s API to power lead generation and conversion. And we can make it easy to get set up. Book a demo with our team to see what your PPE API could unlock for your lending institution.