Short version
You go to a bank for a home loan. They go to a mortgage specialist. They have to collect a load of paperwork: title search, lein information, tax information, etc. This set of documentation is so standard across the industry, and so extensive, it doesn't make financial sense for each mortgage company to do it all themselves. That's where we come in. Our customers are the mortgage companies, whose customers are the banks, whose customers are home buyers. We take requests for information, farm them out to the people in the right place to collect it, and send it back to the mortgage broker.
We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules and preserve our open society as if there were no terrorists. -- [link|http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/05/opinion/BIO-FRIEDMAN.html|Thomas Friedman]