A borrower cannot reach the sign-in page, or reaches it and cannot get through. They have tried several devices, browsers, and networks and cleared their cache, and nothing helps. It usually affects everyone at a company rather than one person.
The symptom set
Any of these, and more than one of them at once is the giveaway:
- 502 Bad Gateway
- 504
- A white screen with an error code on it
- "Cannot authenticate, please contact your lender"
- A blank e-sign window reported by several borrowers at the same lender
The last one matters because it is easily mistaken for a borrower problem. Several borrowers at one lender with a blank e-sign window is this. One borrower with a blank window is something else — see article 48 for the consent step and article 03 for a genuinely absent package.
This is almost always an expired certificate
The single sign-on connection between the POS and Encompass depends on a certificate issued by ICE Mortgage Technology. When it expires the connection stops and borrowers get these errors. Nothing is wrong with the borrower's account or with the loan file.
What it takes to fix, and who does it
Support supplies the updated metadata XML. Applying it is your own side's job: your company's Encompass super-admin applies the updated metadata XML in the ICE developer portal. Support cannot do this part and cannot do it for you. It is a short task, but it needs that admin access — worth identifying who holds it before you need them.
Worth knowing
Encompass does not warn before this certificate expires. The first sign is usually borrowers reporting they cannot sign in, and it has surfaced over a weekend more than once.
When to contact support
Report it as soon as one borrower describes a gateway error on more than one network, or as soon as a second borrower at the same lender reports a blank e-sign window. Say that other devices and networks were already tried — that rules out the borrower's side immediately and gets you to the real cause faster.