A smooth verification of income process is crucial for mortgage lenders to satisfy customers and maintain efficiency. Unfortunately, with consumer expectations evolving and with better, more secure digital verification solutions on the market, manual verification simply doesn’t cut it anymore.
Today’s winning solutions streamline processes for everyone involved. More efficient workflows and solutions satisfy the expectations of digital consumers and increase ROI for lenders. Fintech and the digital mortgage it enables are both revolutionizing income verification and transforming risk management. Here’s how.
What Is Income Verification? When Mortgage Lenders Use Proof of Income
Mortgage lenders need to accurately determine whether or not a potential borrower is a risk. Lenders use a series of verifications to assess that risk, including income verification. A lender will request a verification of income to check that a borrower is bringing in enough money to make their monthly mortgage payments. If a verification of income report shows that a loan amount is higher than a borrower can pay back, that borrower is less likely to receive a loan.
Lenders may complete income verification using a few different methods. Historically, lenders have requested manual documentation to verify a borrower’s income. This often involved delivering a paystub and the borrower’s most recent W-2 form along with bank statements. Today, more borrowers can submit documents electronically, via email, or through a lender’s online portal.
However, with digital mortgage solutions and digital verifications, specifically, on the rise, manual income verification is becoming a thing of the past. Instead of relying on paper documents, borrowers can authorize lenders to access their financial data, where they can quickly and easily verify income.
It’s not just that manual verification of income is behind the times (even though it is). Manual verification, while a tried-and-true method for many lenders for a long time, presents concrete drawbacks and even risks that digital verification eliminates.
Manual verification simply takes longer. Hunting down relevant documents and generating friction with a frequent back-and-forth with borrowers takes time that drags out the origination process. Longer origination times mean lower ROI for lenders and less satisfaction from the consumer.
And that consumer satisfaction matters. In this digital economy, your borrowers expect increasingly streamlined processes. High-friction paper chases just don’t meet expectations anymore. And you don’t just want to meet expectations; you want to exceed them. Failing to meet today’s consumer expectations frequently results in fewer returning customers, fewer referrals, and all-around lower brand loyalty.
This is where fintech comes in.
How Fintech Streamlines Income Verification For Better Credit Decisioning
Fintech services remedy the problems inherent in manual verification with secure, convenient technology that streamlines processes for lenders and satisfies digitally-accustomed borrowers. Instead of requiring borrowers to dig up old documents, financial technology can verify income by directly accessing a borrower’s financial data. Fintech aims to simplify the mortgage lending process for everyone involved.
Digital verifications streamline mortgage lending by removing friction with borrowers, cutting origination times with fast processes, and moving borrowers more quickly through the conversion funnel. The most innovative technology also goes a step beyond simply removing friction with borrowers to also deliver a quick and secure user experience that simplifies the verification process.
Streamlining income verification isn’t just about speeding up the process. Digital verification solutions also address the risk- and fraud-related problems associated with manual verification. Physical documents received from borrowers can be unreliable. Inaccurate information leads to poor decisioning. Legacy technology that requires copy-pasting and re-keying leaves ample room for error. More risk and higher chances of fraud cost you more time and money in the end. Early Warning reports that “instead of getting information directly from financial institutions,” relying on manual verification “costs banks and lenders millions of dollars.”
Fintech ultimately improves credit decisioning with solutions that provide more accurate data and deeper insights into a borrower’s financial situation, all while cutting the time and risk associated with manual processes.
What’s Next? How The Latest Technology Will Better All Lending Platforms
The proliferation of financial data, and the open banking platforms that enable its access, are continuously evolving, especially amid the digital acceleration brought about by the pandemic. That latest technology and the innovative solutions it powers will improve lending platforms in every way, from streamlining the overall origination process to enabling more accurate, secure verifications from multiple data sources.
An abundance of consumer-permissioned data enables lending platforms to better serve consumers and increase ROI by easily and simply delivering data from multiple sources that may have been previously unavailable. Verifying employment gets easier when lenders can receive payroll and paystub information directly. Lenders that need to refinance or consolidate a loan can rapidly get the necessary loan details. The combined speed, accuracy, and security of these data connections, as well as increased access to additional data sources, enable mortgage lenders to develop the agility necessary to hone their competitive edge and adapt to future changes and challenges.
The Finicity Solution Is Transforming Risk Management For Traditional Banks
The more accurate, more secure, and more convenient solutions enabled by fintech have the potential to transform risk management for traditional banks and lenders. But transforming risk management involves more than delivering better insights to mortgage lenders; it also involves meeting the digital borrower in their digital ecosystem with a solution that benefits the consumer as much as it does the lender.
Enter Finicity Lend.
What is Finicity Lend?
Finicity Lend is a suite of fintech solutions that easily integrates into any lending platform and streamlines the verification process for mortgage lenders. Finicity’s open banking platform powers these solutions and places the consumer at the center of the verification process, which benefits everyone involved.
It goes like this: when it’s time for the borrower to verify their income, the lender kicks off the consumer permissioning process. The borrower then securely consents for the lender to access their financial data. Finicity then generates a “Verification of Income” report using data straight from the borrower’s financial institution. This guarantees the most accurate data, direct from the source. And to top it off, a verification process that could have taken weeks now takes minutes.
The Finicity Lend Verification of Income report includes:
- Financial institution for each account
- Up to 24 months of deposit transactions
- Average monthly income
- Historical and estimated annual income
How Finicity Lend Streamlines Income Verification and Transforms Risk Management
Finicity Lend is the answer to the flaws inherent in manual income verification. And it’s all thanks to data solutions that revolve around consumer empowerment. Using consumer-permissioned data, provided through Finicity’s open banking platform, Lend gives consumers more control over and transparency into their financial data and its benefits. And when the consumer is empowered, mortgage lenders reap the benefits, too.
Thanks to Finicity Lend’s data solutions, both mortgage lenders and borrowers can enjoy a streamlined verification process. Steve Smith put it best: “Once [consumer permissioning is] done, we’re able to gather all appropriate data across multiple accounts, rapidly analyze it and send a verification report to the lender. No papers. No multiple requests. No questions on validity of the data. All done in minutes, not weeks.”
Access to real-time data is the foundation of this streamlined process. Our verification solutions pull and analyze data straight from financial institutions. And all it takes is a report refresh to get immediate updates to reports. No more hindering the origination process with long periods of back-and-forth, hunting down bank statements and other documents. To top it off, our data intelligence layer analyzes financial data and ranks identified income streams with confidence scores, which both streamlines the decisioning process and provides more accurate data for better risk assessment.
Lend also streamlines the lending process and mitigates risk in the long-term. After all, fraud that comes back to bite lenders usually costs not just money, but time. Access to real-time data directly from financial institutions drastically reduces the chances of fraud when compared to verifications completed with manual verification. Our Lend solutions even compare transaction data with other source data (such as employer-provided data) for an additional layer of security.
In the end, streamlining verification of income with Finicity Lend enables mortgage lenders to close more loans more quickly. That enables greater agility, more space for more business, and more money saved in expenses. And with everything about Lend designed to put the consumer front-and-center, everybody leaves the lending process happy.
Thanks to Finicity Lend, you get the information you need for income verifications, and you get it fast. Your borrowers get a better, more empowering experience. You get a more reliable assessment of risk. And both of you can enjoy a streamlined income verification process. Learn more about Finicity Lend’s data solutions and request a demo to see streamlined income verification in action.
Finicity, a Mastercard company and leading provider of open banking solutions, has signed a data access agreement with Brex.
“Finicity has been collaborating in earnest with financial institutions in signing data access agreements with banks and other traditional financial institutions. With our agreement with Brex, we are now extending our approach to fintechs,” said Finicity CEO and Co-founder Steve Smith. “We look forward to working with Brex in pioneering the way financial data is utilized to help businesses grow and achieve their goals.”
Open banking is creating a new relationship with financial data that benefits both lenders and consumers.
I’m very excited to announce the newest addition to our open banking platform: Finicity Pay™, an integrated solution set that enables payments, account creation, and fraud mitigation.
The move to digital continues to accelerate in the payment industry. Banks and fintechs are under pressure to transform processes across the payments ecosystem. They need to process a greater number of payments while giving consumers more flexibility without compromising security.
Finicity Pay transforms these challenges into opportunities for financial service providers to exceed the expectations of their digital consumers. Here’s how:
Enabling Payments for Today’s Digital Economy
Finicity Pay meets the needs of digital consumers and the digital payment ecosystem by enabling Finicity clients to verify the essential account details, owners, and balances that are needed to charge, get paid, or set up an account with confidence. With Finicity Pay, you can enable payments and validate funding sources. You can also seamlessly verify loan account details, including student loans, to detect eligibility for refinancing, loan consolidation, or to support employer student loan repayment or other benefit programs.
Instant Verification of User Data
Whether it’s setting up an account, enabling payments, or just verifying you’ve got the right person — Finicity Pay’s integrations allow for accurate, real-time, consumer-permissioned access to account details, such as the account owner name(s), address, balances, and account and routing transit number. Instant verification allows you to get money moving faster than ever before.
It gets better. Finicity Pay satisfies NACHA’s 2021 requirements for digital ACH transactions allowing for stronger anti-fraud controls. And, Finicity Pay’s data solutions enable faster, more confident transactions.
Increasing Security, Reducing Risk
With instant data verification, users can be confident they’re paying, charging, and setting up accounts with the right person or third party application. Finicity Pay provides all the information needed to help get payments and transfers sooner, while reducing the risk of fraud.
We look forward to seeing how you’ll use Finicity Pay and its open banking capabilities to exceed your customers’ expectations. Do you have a question about Finicity Pay? Send us an email. Download our Finicity Pay overview PDF. Or, request a demo online, to see Finicity Pay in action today.
Mastercard announced it has completed its acquisition of Finicity, a leading North American provider of real-time access to financial data and insights.
“Today is a great milestone as we continue to build out the solutions that deliver on the potential of open banking,” said Craig Vosburg, president, North America, Mastercard. “We now turn our focus on bringing these two talented teams together. That starts with our shared commitment to consumer-centric data practices to create more value for consumers and businesses from the information in their account and give them more control in how that data is used.”
This fireside chat occurred at the Future of Fintech 2020 conference put on by CB Insights.
BMO Harris and Finicity sign a data access agreement in an effort to give consumers more control and secure access to their financial data. The agreement also defines rules for how Finicity and BMO will communicate and exchange financial data.
Agreement Demonstrates BMO’s Focus on Customer-Centric Digital Advancement and Open Banking
CHICAGO & SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – November 12, 2020 – Finicity, a leading provider of open banking solutions, announced today with BMO Harris Bank that they have signed a data access agreement. The agreement signals a commitment to empower consumers with more control and secure sharing of their financial data.
The agreement enables BMO’s customers to have more secure and convenient access to their financial data, empowering them to manage their finances, access capital, and make financial progress. The data access agreement defines common rules for how Finicity and BMO will communicate and exchange financial data.
Finicity embraces five core consumer-permissioned data sharing principles: access, control, transparency, traceability, and security. As consumer-permissioned data sharing continues to grow, these principles can empower consumers with control and awareness of which parties have access to their financial data, what aspects of financial data they want to share, and how to modify the access. Customers retain ownership of their data and have the ability to consent to which data will be shared.
BMO customers will also be able to take advantage of Finicity’s open banking platform to permission access to their financial data for their own benefit across a variety of apps and services. For example, Experian Boosttm enables customers to permission financial data that is added to their credit file, which engages consumers more directly within the credit scoring process.
“It’s important for our customers to be in control of their financial lives,” said Hugh McKee, head of BMO Partners. “This partnership with Finicity not only empowers our customers with more control over their financial data, it also creates an environment for them to meet their goals built on transparency and security.”
“Finicity continues to be at the forefront of partnerships with financial institutions to provide the most robust and secure data sharing environment through our open banking platform,” said Finicity CEO and Cofounder Steve Smith. “Working with forward-thinking organizations like BMO Harris will have a real impact on driving better financial outcomes for consumers, including financial literacy and financial inclusion.”
Finicity continues to take a market leadership role by signing a data access agreement with BMO Harris, marking its eighteenth agreement. Finicity’s signed direct access agreements represent more than 50% coverage access of all direct deposit accounts in the US through direct API connections.
Visit www.bmoharris.com to learn more about their innovative approach towards digital banking. To learn more about Finicity open banking platform and its commitment to fast, reliable and high-quality data, visit www.finicity.com.
About BMO Harris Bank
BMO Harris Bank provides a broad range of personal banking products and solutions through more than 500 branches and fee-free access to over 40,000 ATMs across the United States. BMO Harris Bank’s commercial banking team provides a combination of sector expertise, local knowledge and mid-market focus throughout the United States. For more information about BMO Harris Bank, visit the company fact sheet. Accounts are subject to approval. BMO Harris Bank N.A. Member FDIC. BMO Harris Bank is part of BMO Financial Group, a highly diversified financial services provider with total assets of CDN$974 billion as of July 31, 2020.
About Finicity
Finicity’s mission is to help individuals, families, and organizations make smarter financial decisions through safe and secure access to fast, high-quality data. The company provides a proven and trusted open banking platform that puts consumers in control of their financial data, transforming the way we experience money for everything from budgeting and payments to investing and lending. Finicity partners with influential financial institutions and disruptive fintech providers alike to give consumers a leg up in a complicated financial world, helping to improve financial literacy, expanding financial inclusion, and ultimately leading to better financial outcomes. Finicity is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. To learn more or test drive its API, visit www.finicity.com.
Mortgage lenders are looking for the best way to engage applicants and process their loans as quickly as possible. One key is providing the best experience possible for customers, loan originators and processors.