Telerate Inc.'s Advance Factor Service has agreed to be purchased by Mortgage Information Corp., according to an announcement last week from MIC.
AFS forecasts short-term movements in prepayments for mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. In these forecasts, AFS links data from proprietary title searches to loan files.
The prepayment forecaster is widely used by traders and managers of MBS portfolios, allowing them "to predict the unpredictable in forecasting mortgage prepayment trends," said Rick Snape, Telerate's chief operating officer. Telerate is a subsidiary of Bridge Information Systems and was bought from Dow Jones in 1998.
San Francisco-based MIC, specializing in mortgage databases and analytics, began managing AFS this January. The acquisition will be completed in January 2000, according to the announcement.
"We will enhance the current product to make more data available via interactive software," said MIC president Dan Feshbach.
He said AFS will add to "MIC's other extensive set of loan-database sectors such as non-agency and home-equity backed securities," adding that it will complement MIC's "predictive modeling products" and its data repository.
Paul Descloux, an MIC director, will lead AFS. - ES
