I work at a bank that has never required escrow on in-house loans before. Would anyone share who you are using to help you with this? I know there have to be vendors out there who help with the tax searches and yearly analysis but I can't seem to find any! Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Normally your core application vendor will be able to handle this (once set up and properly tested). Have you already determined that they don't offer this?

Our core processor does have escrow capability, which we are installing. However, my major concern are the policies, procedures and any regulations (federal or state) with which we would need to comply. Since we've never had to escrow, I obviously have a concern that we collect and pay the insurance and taxes in a timely manner AND that we don't try to collect more than we are allowed from the customer either at closing or during the year.

Any help in this regard would be greatly appreciated.

We've never done escrow either. We are going to use our LOS for the initial statements and the BOL escrow calculator for the breakdowns. We are going to use our current core system for taking payments and disbursements.

You have to rely on your customer for insurance company payment information and tax information (initially).

RE: our core system - we have had to turn on some "switches" to make it functional. And we are in "beta" testing mode with some of our employees (voluntarily) to make sure that we understand the reports and payment processing steps that need to be done small scale before we have to start escrow on practically every new 1-4 owner occupied loan in the portfolio.

Don't be afraid of escrows, they are easy once you learn the reg, especially if you have a core processer that does all the work. This is how ours work:

Insurance: we get bills from the ins co, log the new coverage and premium amounts, run a report of polices due for the month and verify we have them all. If not we contact the agent and mark the account not to disburse funds. We have the system set up to disburse funds on the same day each month. The system disburses the funds and puts them in a GL, the next day we disburse funds from the GL and mail the checks.

Taxes: actually work the same way. Some counties send us bills and some send a report.

We do our analysis on the anniversary of the account, so 45 days prior to the payment change the system generates the analysis and the refund checks.

They are labor intensive but a labor of love (LOL). The BOL tools are awesome! http://www.bankersonline.com/tools/lender/escrowanalysis.html

I am not an expert in Escrow but I do know that you should also visit RESPA.

Best of luck

This is my major concern as well. Our core system does have the capability of handling the escrow, it is completely reliant on us to set it up properly and maintain it. This is driving me nuts!