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The agency said the proposed deal would mean higher costs, less innovation and fewer choices in the process of financing the purchase of a home.
“This deal would reduce competition in key areas of the mortgage process, ultimately raising costs for lenders and homebuyers,” said Patty Brink, acting deputy director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition.
The FTC voted 4-0 to bring an administrative complaint.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The deal, announced in May, prompted worries from the beginning that it could raise costs for consumers by giving ICE too much pricing power in the mortgage data market that lenders rely on. An industry group of community lenders opposed the deal.
Black Knight, which provides software, data and analytics to the real estate and housing finance markets, is the latest in a string of deals undertaken by ICE since 2016 to support its mortgage-servicing business as it bets on a windfall from automation of the home financing process.
In 2020 ICE, in an $11 billion deal, purchased Ellie Mae, a cloud-based platform that supports all aspects of mortgage origination. That followed a $335 million deal for Simplifile in 2019, and the acquisition of MERS, in which ICE took a majority stake in 2016 and bought outright in 2018.
In February, Reuters reported that Black Knight had decided to put its Empower loan origination software business up for sale in a response to U.S. antitrust concerns.
