Appraisal Firewall Enhancements
Scheduled for Friday, February 17th, 2023
Release Information for Appraisers
 
Starting Friday morning, February 17th, 2023, an updated version of Appraisal Firewall will be available for you. Our first system update of 2023 includes lender reviewed cancellation fees and lender-initiated edits to appraiser group members. Please read below for a full description of each new enhancement coming out in this system update.

For more information, check out our Help Center articles HERE. 
Lender Reviewed Cancellation Fees
Appraisal Firewall is introducing a new lender setting that will allow lenders to review cancellation fees entered by appraisers. This setting (if enabled) is to ensure lenders are disclosing more accurate fees to their borrowers and acknowledging compensation due to you for any work completed prior to order cancellation. When the setting is in place, lenders will be able to Approve, Counter, or Decline your cancellation fee. If the setting is not engaged, your cancellation fee will automatically go through exactly how it always has, i.e., no review by the lender will occur.

How To Use This Feature: 
The lender must have this setting enabled on their division. When an order is cancelled, you will still have 24-hours from the time the order was cancelled to enter your fee. Please note: the process in which you enter and submit your cancellation fee remains the same. Once you submit your cancellation fee, the lender will be notified that they have up to 24-hours to Approve, Counter, or Decline your initial cancellation fee. Approving the fee works precisely how it does today, Countering will have the lender suggest an alternative cancellation fee amount, and Declining will give you a fresh 24-hours to enter a different cancellation fee. For a full walkthrough, please read our Lender Reviewed Cancellation Fee Process article HERE.
Lender Initiated Edits to Appraiser Groups
In mid-August, Appraisal Firewall introduced a feature to eliminate some of the challenges appraisers encounter when creating or maintaining their Appraisal Firewall account. This feature allows lenders to suggest edits to your account profile or settings information. That announcement can be found HERE. This same logic is now applicable to appraiser group accounts. Now, when a lender suggests any edits to appraiser group members, Appraisal Firewall will send an email notification to the appraiser group administrator, alerting them to any edits made. Autonomy still resides in the hand of the group administrator to approve or deny the changes.

How To Use This Feature: 
This feature works exactly as it does for standalone appraiser accounts. Edits initiated by the lender will email the appraiser group administrator. If edits by the lender have been initiated to multiple appraiser members, the group administrator will receive separate email notifications for each member account that has an edit awaiting review. When the group administrator accesses the account, an overlay will appear with an itemized view of all fields that were edited, and to which members the edits were applied. For more information on how group administrators can approve or deny changes, check out the guide HERE.