Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO)

Who uses MISMO?

MISMO mortgage standards are accepted and deployed by most organizations involved in creating mortgages, and they are required by most regulators, housing agencies and the GSEs that participate in the industry. A partial list of organizations using MISMO standards includes banks, credit unions, mortgage lenders, investors in real estate and mortgages, services providers, real estate appraisers, industry vendors, borrowers, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, the Federal Housing Administration and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The standards are also used by settlement and other third parties.

What is MISMO used for?

MISMO’s vision is to standardize how the mortgage industry communicates. Their mission is to drive standardized data and information and improve business practices between all mortgage stakeholders through collaborative and innovative initiatives that improve efficiency, reduce costs, and facilitate stakeholder success.

MISMO, via broad industry collaboration, creates standards that improve transparency and communications in housing finance and support solutions to many of the mortgage industry’s primary business issues. Use of MISMO standards to exchange information more securely, efficiently, and economically has been found to lower per-loan costs, improve profit margins, reduce errors, and speed up the loan process by reducing manual, paper-based processes.

MISMO Standards and MISMO Reference Model

MISMO standards provide a common language for exchanging data and information across the mortgage finance industry. MISMO has residential mortgage, commercial mortgage, and eMortgage/digital standards available along with a wide variety of additional guides, tools, and other resources that support and accelerate the implementation process. The MISMO Reference Model which structures the concepts and data points used for the mortgage industry, is a framework used to structure information.

Here are some examples of well-known MISMO standards and resources:

• Business Glossary – a business-friendly collection of terms and definitions with content from both MISMO and non-MISMO sources. The glossary includes information about business terms, business processes, business events, documents, forms, and calculations, and supports elements from the Uniform Appraisal Dataset for MISMO 2.6 (UAD), Uniform Loan Delivery Dataset for MISMO 3.0 (ULDD), Uniform Closing Dataset for MISMO 3.3 (UCD), Industry Loan Application Dataset for MISMO 3.4 (iLAD), and Uniform Loan Application Dataset for MISMO 3.4 (ULAD).
• Life of Loan Business Process Model – a high-level business process model presented in Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN™), depicting common activities that may occur over the life of a mortgage loan. The model enables business professionals and others to access information about MISMO products within the context of their business processes.
• Logical Data Model (LDM) – the Logical Data Model consists of two sets of related models: a single Platform Independent Model that serves as the master blueprint for all formats of the MISMO model (XSD, JSON, ER model, etc.), and a series of Platform Specific Models that are derived from the Platform Independent Model. The Logical Data Model is new and completely different from models previously issued by MISMO. It is intended to support any technology that a company might choose to utilize. The LDM will support XML, as MISMO has always done, and will also support JSON, which is the technology of choice for mobile transactions.
• Residential Specifications – The MISMO Residential Standards are often referred to collectively as “the MISMO Reference Model”. The MISMO Reference Model contains:
  • The Logical Data Dictionary (LDD) which provides a business centric view of the model. The LDD provides standard business names, definitions, allowable values, formats and more in an easy-to-use Excel workbook format.
  • The Enhanced Logical Data Dictionary (ELDD) which is a user-friendly resource for business and technology professionals. A companion document to Version 3.5 of the MISMO Logical Data Model (LDM), the enhanced LDD allows for easier data searching, sorting, and filtering and shows how each data element fits into the LDM, XML Schema and API Toolkit. Business analysts can use the ELDD to easily find out which data elements are available within the MISMO Reference Model and where they are located.
  • The XML Schema specifies how the data and relationships that support industry business processes are organized into a logical, well-defined structure that allows for both the exchange of data and documents as well as its use within a system or enterprise. Included within the XML Schema are the SMART Doc^© standards which provide formats for electronic formatting of documents.
  • The Industry Loan Application Dataset (iLAD) which is a compendium of data that are included in the Uniform Residential Loan Application (URLA), the Government-Sponsored Enterprises’ (GSEs) Automated Underwriting System interfaces such as the Uniform Appraisal Dataset for MISMO 2.6 (UAD), Uniform Loan Delivery Dataset for MISMO 3.0 (ULDD), Uniform Closing Dataset for MISMO 3.3 (UCD), Industry Loan Application Dataset for MISMO 3.4 (iLAD), and Uniform Loan Application Dataset for MISMO 3.4 (ULAD) , as well as the existing Fannie Mae 3.2 file.
• Commercial Specifications – a Commercial Logical Data Dictionary (LDD) and Commercial Reference Model. The Commercial Reference Model is a model that standardizes industry terms and definitions and provides a comprehensive a structure for the relationship of all data in a commercial loan to be used in a consistent manner across all transactions.
• eMortgage Specifications – The MISMO eMortgage standards provide a framework for implementing and automating all aspects of the digital mortgage process. The work products provided are approved MISMO eMortgage standards and include Remote Online Notarization Standards (RON), SMART Doc® Components, eMortgage Glossary, eMortgage Closing Guide, eMessaging and Packaging, eRecording, and eSigned PDF Guidelines.

MISMO Communities of Practice (CoPs)

Each mortgage industry “Community of Practice” produces an implementation guide to document its area of the Standard. These provide more detailed guidance for implementing the Reference Model. MISMO has grouped the business process areas of the mortgage industry into four major categories: Origination, Servicing, Secondary, and Real Estate Services. Each category covers specific business processes within that industry area.

Communities of Practice focus on the interests of a particular area roughly based on MISMO’s Mortgage Industry Process Areas and include subject matter experts for each industry area. There are also data modeling, cross-industry, management, administrative, and other CoPs.

MISMO’s Mortgage Industry Process Areas

A complete list of CoPs and Development Workgroups can be found here.