The Sherman programming team has been busy again! Our consumer loan calculation engine, the powerhouse SCEX, can now be run on the popular open source platform, Linux. While Windows may own a large majority of the desktop market, more and more application providers are using back-end systems powered by Linux due to its robust and easily accessible nature.

Our Sherman Calculation Engine with XML interface (SCEX), already the industry standard, continues to expand at our customers’ requests. The SCEX has become the calculation engine of choice for Loan Origination Software (LOS) providers across the country, as well as financial institutions seeking to develop their own platform systems.

WinLoan-32’s new tabs ( Consumer, Commercial, Mortgage) allow users to switch types of loans without jumping to change setups. The following scenario explains the usefulness of the new loan type tabs.

Previously with WinLoan-32, suppose a loan officer computed a consumer loan, such as an auto loan, and his next customer was interested in a mortgage loan. If the mortgage loan used different setup parameters, he had to go into the Setup Files, then the Account Setup, and select the Account corresponding to mortgage loans. That’s several clicks! The loan officer would then need to switch back for consumer loans. If these different loan structures have different setup files, forgetting to switch would lead to incorrect results.

We find that the frequency of enhancements made to the engine is accelerating as we add more and more new users. Most enhancements are specific to a particular calculation required by a single lender or credit insurance carrier, but sometimes they are extensions of capability in loan structures, and of interest to most of our users. We think that is the case here, and so what follows deserves to be included in “What’s New”.

As the number of loan origination software providers using our SCEX has grown, so has the number of new lenders relying on SCEX calculations each month. This, in turn, means more SCEX enhancements as we encounter situations that require adding a new calculation path to precisely match a client’s numbers. We developed a set of tools for our own internal use to aid in the testing of these additions that automatically re-computes hundreds of loans and identifies any that have changed. One of our senior programmers suggested that this could be modified to be a very useful tool for our partners as well.