ICE Mortgage Technology's move to drop a planned fee for lenders and vendors who need extra time accessing the Encompass software developer kit (SDK) after its Dec. 31 sunset reveals that adoption of the API standard has had some hiccups. 

In a late-August notice to Encompass customers and partners, ICE said that for those who had signed up for "transition access to the Encompass SDK," the fee for post-deadline access would be waived, effective immediately.

"We recognize migrations of this complexity take time and that the path forward looks different for every organization," the notice said. "With that in mind, we want to ensure cost is never a barrier to completing your transition."

This does not change the idea that the cut-off should be treated as a hard deadline; the fee-based access had been an accommodation which ICE put in place back in August 2025 with the intent of being an interim measure.

The bottom line for lenders and vendors

• The Dec. 31 deadline is real, but the fee waiver means it is not a financial cliff. Budget for extended dual-running rather than a hard cutover cost.
• Get specific, written confirmation from ICE or your vendor on which SDK components, particularly SmartClient-dependent plugins, are actually affected before assuming your integrations are safe.
• Treat vendor renewal conversations happening now as a moment to benchmark against API-native competitors like LendingPad; but it is still a heavy lift to switch LOS technology..
• Watch earnings commentary and any further LinkedIn/customer notices from ICE for signs of a second delay.

Why this matters now

The switch, from SDK plugins to Encompass Partner Connect's API architecture, was first announced in September 2024 and was originally set to take effect Oct. 31, 2025. ICE pushed the deadline to the end of this year after acknowledging that "while many customers were ready for this transition, others needed additional time."

SDK users were supposed to move to products which are Encompass API compliant or are native to the loan origination system.

Legacy system users were also supposed to shift to EPC for ordering appraisal, closing fees, documents, flood, fraud, mortgage insurance, pricing, tax service, title and verifications.

Nearly a year after the original implementation postponement, industry consultants say confusion, not resistance, is still the primary obstacle.

"I think when you say people aren't ready, I think that's where the confusion really lies," said Brent Emler, partner and revenue lead at Pacifico Partners, an Encompass consultancy. 

Lenders frequently don't know how deeply the SDK is embedded in their own environment, he said, and some vendors are running both SDK and API simultaneously, making it "hard to ascertain what's actually happening within individual lender environments."

Chris Davis, Pacifico's partner and practice lead, said ICE hasn't specified exactly which SDK components are affected, including Encompass SmartClient, the application many users run to access the LOS, which is itself SDK-based. Whether third-party plugins built into SmartClient are covered by the sunset "is where no one knows the answer," Davis said.

The API environment is better to use because it is more secure and faster, Emler noted. But Davis quickly added "not all the functionality that you can do with the SDK has been opened up to the APIs yet."

Some users are trying to be proactive and remove things the SDK does if they find native functionality in Encompass, Davis added.

"We want the industry to know that Encompass — the Encompass APIs, the new Encompass web features, the workflow engine, task-based workflows, the web screens — it's really, really dynamite technology," Emler said. "They can get a lot of the things that they've been wanting from ICE."

It takes a lot of effort to make the transition but ICE has "created some great features that are very powerful, and lenders can save money on a lot of things that they're currently spending money on just using the new native Encompass functionality," he said.

The idea was to build a great platform and people would want to migrate.

"What actually happens in real life is people are resistant to that change," Emler said. This leaves ICE in a really challenging position where they have all this new functionality, and if they don't provide it to SmartClient users, then they have this perception of "you're just old," he continued.

But if they do provide those to users, ICE has "just made it easier for them to stay on the old version of their platform. So they're in kind of a tough position," said Emler. "But I would like the industry to know that it's really great functionality, and there's a lot you can do with it from an automation standpoint."

The competitive opening

The uncertainty is creating room for rivals to make their case. Kelli Himebaugh, executive vice president of LOS sales and strategy at LendingPad is one of the newer API-native loan origination systems launched a decade ago, said the transition is exposing a broader dynamic in the LOS market.

"They don't want to be on legacy technology if you're a lender, and when you're a vendor, you don't want to become the legacy technology," Himebaugh said of the pressure facing Encompass and its ecosystem. She credited Encompass with building the largest market share in the industry, but said the migration "does definitely open up opportunities for us at LendingPad" as lenders and vendors reassess their technology stack.

LendingPad's pitch centers on API-first architecture with minimal custom coding required, a direct contrast to the rewrite-heavy migration Encompass users now face. "You don't have to do a lot of customization on the administrative side," Himebaugh said. "We put a lot of switches and levers that can be turned on or configured very easily."

For lenders currently mid-migration, that's a useful data point when vendor and consultant contracts come up for renewal: competitors are actively positioning the ICE transition as a reason to shop.

What ICE says

In discussing the transition's status on Intercontinental Exchange's fourth quarter 2025 earnings call, Rothschild & Co. Redburn analyst Simon Clinch suggested the "relatively lengthy" transition process was due in part to "a lot of clients that are still sort of wedded to the old ways." ICE leadership disputed that narrative.

The transition "is just really providing more efficiency in supporting the connectivity that our clients have in either plugins and bespoke things that they build around our solution or the way that they connect to third-party vendors," Intercontinental Exchange President Ben Jackson said at the time. 

But for some Encompass clients, the transition has been a lower priority, "so we gave them more time to do it because we know it wasn't slowing down our pace of innovation in other areas," Jackson said.

When asked directly by National Mortgage News for a progress update ICE said: "We remain committed to communicating directly with our customers and vendor partners about the SDK to API transition and are focused on that channel at this time," a spokesperson said.

What's actually involved in the switch

The technical lift is nontrivial. Jessica Evett, senior vice president of product technology and technology operations at Cloudvirga (a Stewart Information Services company), said SDKs handle functions, like authentication, token refreshing and retry/error handling, natively, while an API environment requires vendors to build that logic themselves. Whether a given SDK is "loosely" or "tightly" coupled to a firm's base platform determines whether the migration is a modification or a full rewrite, she said.

"Because SDKs function as a wrapper and a whole 'toolkit' of sorts, the SDK natively told our system that changes occurred," Evett said. "Migration to API is a shift to a more event-driven framework where you're using webhooks and polling APIs for updates."

Retry/error handling, is another item which exists natively in SDKs but would have to be coded for in an API. "You must think through what constitutes a retry, timeout issue, versus an input failure etc.," she said.

Vendors serving multiple lender brands face a compounding problem: mapped customizations built around SDK quirks over years don't automatically translate to the API paradigm, and each one has to be re-evaluated. "There's a fair amount of work for any service provider that has a multitude of lenders or partners... to navigate how to best advise them on changes they potentially need to make," Evett said.

One case study of a completed migration: LoanLogics announced in January that its LoanBeam due-diligence technology is now integrated with EPC, saying the move preserved existing customer workflows while adding new automation and data-sharing capabilities.

An open question

Whether ICE grants a second formal delay beyond Dec. 31 remains unresolved. Adriana Montes, owner of Florida Dreams Realty Group and a lender who is an Encompass user, said she's watching to see if that happens, and places responsibility for the holdup on vendors rather than lenders. 

"We are just at the mercy of the vendors and how they are adjusting with APIs and workflows," she said.