Editor-in-chief of HousingWire and host of the “In the Winner’s Circle” podcast Jacob Gaffney recently spoke with Finicity CEO Steve Smith about digitization in the lending industry, the importance of customer data protection and the role that blockchain technology is beginning to play. Listen to the full podcast to learn more about how these tech trends are impacting mortgage lending here.
As a Sovrin Steward, Finicity will promote the adoption of self-sovereign identity technology
SALT LAKE CITY — April 11, 2018 — Finicity, a leading financial data aggregator, has today been announced as a founding Steward with the Sovrin Foundation, a private-sector, international non-profit whose mission is to promote self-sovereign identity online. Stewards are tasked with the operation and maintenance of the foundation’s decentralized digital identity platform.
As a Steward, Finicity will actively contribute intellectual and infrastructure resources to the Sovrin Network, while working with other Sovrin Stewards to accelerate the mission of the organization by promoting the adoption of self-sovereign identity (SSI) technologies. At its core, this network uses a purpose-built distributed ledger — commonly referred to as a blockchain — to enable the secure exchange of cryptographically signed credentials possessed by individuals, organizations and connected devices, thereby providing the internet with the true identity layer long absent in its original architecture.
“There has been no digital equivalent of a passport, driver’s license, birth certificate or other identity document that the owner exclusively possesses and uses to verify their rights and privileges in the online world,” said Nick Thomas, president and co-founder of Finicity. “Instead, we have dozens of user names and passwords across a multitude of vulnerable databases. Supporting Sovrin’s efforts to solve this, and other identity issues, will bring about a tectonic shift in our digital lives as consumers are put back in control of their identities and data.”
Finicity is one of more than 25 Stewards — organizations spanning the globe and representing a diverse cross-section of industries — charged with ensuring that the network is available, public, secure and independent of outside control.
“As a leading consumer-permissioned financial services data platform, Finicity brings a unique perspective and exciting new use case to the Sovrin Network, since identity and data protection are at the core of their business,” said Dr. Phillip Windley, chairman of the Sovrin Foundation. “Our organizations share a common goal of empowering and protecting consumers through decentralized identity and data management and more trusting interactions.”
Sovrin Stewards are governed by the Sovrin Foundation’s constitutional Trust Framework, within which the ‘diffused trust model’ seeks to prevent undue influence over the network from any single source. Other Sovrin Stewards include IBM, Deutsche Telekom, Brigham Young University and the law firms of BakerHostetler and Perkins Coie.
“We are committed to helping individuals and organizations maintain true control of their data, while empowering them to readily use it to their benefit across a variety of applications and services,” said Steve Smith, CEO and co-founder of Finicity. “But control of data starts with control of identity. We are excited to be working within the Sovrin ecosystem and its wide ranging group of Stewards that share such a powerful vision of giving control back to the individual.”
To learn more about Finicity, visit www.finicity.com. To learn more about the Sovrin Foundation, visit sovrin.org.
# # #
About Finicity:
Finicity enables a financial data-sharing ecosystem that is secure, inclusive and innovative. Through its real-time financial data aggregation and insights platform, Finicity provides solutions for financial management, payments and credit decisioning. It is also leading the development and promotion of industry standards. The company has developed more than 16,000 bank integrations, with the vast majority through connections that provide access to formatted bank data, improving information access and accuracy. Finicity is the winner of API World’s 2016 Finance API of the Year.
About the Sovrin Foundation:
The international, non-profit Sovrin Foundation is governed by a constitutional Trust Framework that ensures its independence from government or industry influence and codifies its dedication to providing self-sovereign digital identity for all. The Sovrin network is operated by independent stewards and uses the power of a hybrid distributed ledger as a fast, private and secure framework for providing every person, organization, and connected device a permanent identity with which to transact online and operate securely in everyday life. Learn more about the Trust Framework underlying the Sovrin network here.
Finicity was announced today as a HousingWire Tech100 winner, denoting our company as one of the most innovative technology companies in housing! We were recognized for our suite of credit decisioning products, including Finicity Reports, and our commitment to moving the industry towards an all-digital verification process. To read more, click here. To see the full list of winners, click here.
In his article for The Financial Brand, Steve Smith covers how new technology and improvements in data quality are making it easier for lenders to evaluate the credit worthiness of consumers who’ve been labeled “credit invisible.” Click here to learn more about how data aggregation technology is transforming the credit decisioning process for both borrowers and lenders.
Finicity’s asset verification solution to be integrated into BeSmartee’s digital lending platform
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – March 27, 2018 – Finicity, a leading provider of real-time financial data aggregation and insights, announced today an integration agreement with BeSmartee, a digital mortgage marketplace provider, to further streamline and accelerate the digital loan origination process for lenders and borrowers. The agreement will integrate Finicity’s Verification of Assets (VoA) solution into BeSmartee’s next generation point-of-sale platform for mortgage originations.
Finicity is committed to utilizing consumer-permissioned data in the credit decisioning space to increase accuracy and decisioning speed while reducing fraud. Through bank-validated data and data intelligence, Finicity provides solutions to lenders that assist them in digitizing and modernizing the lending process — reducing friction with borrowers while providing better, cleaner data that can shorten verification to minutes instead of days.
In BeSmartee’s platform, lenders can request an asset verification report with one click. Borrowers are prompted to complete a short online process to permission use of their financial account data, which is then used to generate a real-time verification report.
“Finicity is improving the lending process through superior data access, quality and insights,” said Steve Smith, Finicity CEO. “We’re proud to be working alongside BeSmartee to accelerate the digital loan process, improving efficiency for lenders and transparency for borrowers.”
BeSmartee is a complete digital origination process, which gives borrowers greater control and guidance while providing lenders with a customizable platform to improve efficiency and the overall experience.
“Integrating with Finicity is a key step in helping us continue to provide exceptional services to our clients in the form of speed, accuracy and reliability within our best-of-breed mortgage origination point of sale platform,” said Arvin Sahakian, BeSmartee co-founder. “We look forward to working with Finicity. They have great technology and, more importantly, great people behind that technology.”
Finicity is an authorized, integrated provider of asset verification reports within Fannie Mae’s Desktop Underwriter® (DU®). This gives lenders a validated asset report through Fannie Mae’s Day 1 Certainty™ initiative. Finicity is also part of the Single Source Validation (SSV) pilot, meaning Fannie Mae will utilize transaction data from Finicity reports to validate assets, income and employment. A broader rollout of SSV is planned later this year and will build on Fannie Mae’s Day 1 Certainty initiative.
Finicity is also an authorized Freddie Mac asset validation report provider, and Freddie Mac and Finicity are working together on new methods to validate income from payroll deposit data from bank statements.
To stay up to date on all Finicity company and product announcements, visit the website at www.finicity.com.
# # #
About Finicity:
Finicity enables a financial data-sharing ecosystem that is secure, inclusive and innovative. Through its real-time financial data aggregation and insights platform, Finicity provides solutions for financial management, payments and credit decisioning. It is also leading the development and promotion of industry standards. The company has developed more than 16,000 bank integrations, with the vast majority through connections that provide access to formatted bank data, improving information access and accuracy. Finicity is the winner of API World’s 2016 Finance API of the Year.
About BeSmartee:
BeSmartee has developed an automated mortgage origination technology the company private labels and licenses to lenders. By utilizing artificial intelligence, BeSmartee’s process enables lenders to take their borrowers from the initial contact into underwriting in 20 minutes with a complete loan application, credit report, income/asset documents, eSigned/eDelivered disclosures and paid appraisal. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Huntington Beach, Calif., the BeSmartee team has worked on the front and back-end of mortgage originations for over a decade, applying their knowledge to develop a truly unrivaled user experience, with an array of tools and features catering to the specific needs of lenders and their customers.
Reporter Kelsey Ramírez from HousingWire covered the announcement of our integration with Ellie Mae, whose quoted executive said, “Our mission is to provide our lenders and partners with a true digital mortgage.” To read the full article, click here.
Integration provides verification of assets report to speed up lending process while improving the experience for lenders and their customers
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah and PLEASANTON, California – March 19, 2018 – Finicity, a provider of real-time financial data aggregation and insights, and Ellie Mae® (NYSE: ELLI), the leading cloud-based platform provider for the mortgage finance industry, today announced an integration agreement to provide Finicity’s digital Verification of Assets (VoA) solution through Ellie Mae’s Encompass® digital mortgage solution.
The mortgage origination process has increased in cost over the past several years, reaching almost $8,000, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, doubling the cost since 2009. Additionally, consumers have increasing expectations for a fast and simplified experience. To address this, Finicity is leading the delivery of digital verifications that can help speed the process up to 11 days. First to market is the Finicity VoA report, providing a streamlined digital experience that rapidly and accurately validates a borrower’s assets and will be accessed through Encompass.
“Increased access to financial data is changing the way lenders look at underwriting and is playing a major role in moving lending to a fully digital experience,” said Steve Smith, CEO and co-founder of Finicity. “Working with a market leader like Ellie Mae to deliver on the promise of digitization is very exciting and will have significant impact on the origination process.”
Finicity is one of the largest financial data aggregators and uses consumer-permissioned financial data for its credit decisioning solutions. Through a digital verification process, lenders can shorten the time to close and reduce personnel and financial resources. Utilizing transaction data direct from financial institutions also improves accuracy and reduces fraud. Additionally, it provides borrowers a paper-free, hassle-free experience.
Ellie Mae is offering a true digital mortgage experience covering the entire loan lifecycle, so lenders can originate more loans, lower origination costs and reduce time to close. Ellie Mae’s connected community includes 230,000 users and thousands of service providers, and the Ellie Mae Network processes millions of transactions every month, touching approximately 30 percent of the residential loans originated in the United States. Finicity will leverage Partner Connect as part of the early partner program to offer income and asset verification to Ellie Mae customers.
Through the integration, lenders will be able to request an asset verification report in a single click. Once requested, a borrower will be prompted to complete a simple online process that identifies the financial information they want included and permissions the creation of the report. Lenders can review reports with bank-validated data in near real-time, shortening the verification process to minutes — instead of days.
“At Ellie Mae, our mission is to provide our lenders with innovative solutions to automate the entire loan lifecycle for a true digital mortgage,” said Parvesh Sahi, senior vice president of business development for Ellie Mae. “We will continue to embrace technology partners like Finicity to change the way lenders and consumers engage in the loan manufacturing process. We’re happy to partner with Finicity to provide solutions through our Encompass NG Lending Platform and our Encompass Connect product suite to help realize the vision of a truly digital mortgage.”
Finicity is an authorized asset report provider as part of Fannie Mae’s Day 1 CertaintyTM initiative. Finicity is also part of the Single Source Validation (SSV) pilot, meaning Fannie Mae will utilize transaction data from Finicity reports to validate assets, income and employment. A broader rollout of SSV is planned later this year and will build on Fannie Mae’s Day 1 Certainty initiative. Finicity is also an authorized Freddie Mac asset validation report provider, and Freddie Mac and Finicity are partnering on new methods to validate income from payroll deposit data from bank statements.
To stay up to date on all Finicity company and product announcements, visit the website at www.finicity.com.
# # #
About Finicity:
Finicity enables a financial data-sharing ecosystem that is secure, inclusive and innovative. Through its real-time financial data aggregation and insights platform, Finicity provides solutions for financial management, payments and credit decisioning. It is also leading the development and promotion of industry standards. The company has developed more than 16,000 bank integrations, with the vast majority through connections that provide access to formatted bank data, improving information access and accuracy. Finicity is the winner of API World’s 2016 Finance API of the Year.
About Ellie Mae:
Ellie Mae (NYSE:ELLI) is the leading cloud-based platform provider for the mortgage finance industry. Ellie Mae’s technology solutions enable lenders to originate more loans, reduce origination costs, and shorten the time to close, all while ensuring the highest levels of compliance, quality and efficiency. Visit EllieMae.com or call 877.355.4362 to learn more.
Finicity’s Verification of Assets solution to be integrated into MortgageHippo’s digital lending platform
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – March 6, 2018 – Finicity, a provider of real-time financial data aggregation and insights, announced today it is working with MortgageHippo, creators of the leading borrower-centric digital lending platform, to streamline and speed up the verification process in mortgage lending. The initial focus is on integration of Finicity’s Verification of Assets (VoA) solution into the MortgageHippo platform, further digitizing the mortgage experience for lenders and borrowers.
Finicity’s credit decisioning solutions allow lenders to free up resources, improve accuracy and reduce fraud, all while giving borrowers a paper-free, hassle-free experience that utilizes transaction data direct from financial institutions. Through the MortgageHippo platform, lenders will request an asset verification report, which will then inform the borrower to complete a simple online process to identify the financial information they want included and to permission creation of the report. Lenders can review reports with bank-validated data in near real-time, shortening the verification process to minutes instead of days.
“Consumers are looking for experiences that are simple and fast. Lenders are looking to meet these expectations while improving efficiency and profitability,” said Steve Smith, CEO and co-founder of Finicity. “We’re excited to work with MortgageHippo, another innovator that is enhancing the mortgage lending experience for borrowers and lenders with a smart, digital process.”
“Finicity has shown significant market leadership in digitizing the verification process for mortgage lending,” said Michael Salichs, president of MortgageHippo. “Having their solution integrated into our platform is a perfect fit with our vision of an omnichannel digital experience that makes the lending process easier, faster and more pleasant for everyone.”
MortgageHippo is integrated with several industry leading loan origination system (LOS) providers, further simplifying access to and management of reports.
Finicity is an authorized, integrated provider of asset verification reports within Fannie Mae’s Desktop Underwriter® (DU®). This gives lenders a validated asset report through Fannie Mae’s Day 1 CertaintyTM initiative. Finicity is also part of the Single Source Validation (SSV) pilot, meaning Fannie Mae will utilize transaction data from Finicity reports to validate assets, income and employment. A broader rollout of SSV is planned later this year and will build on Fannie Mae’s Day 1 Certainty initiative.
To stay up to date on all Finicity company and product announcements, visit the website at www.finicity.com.
# # #
About Finicity:
Finicity enables a financial data-sharing ecosystem that is secure, inclusive and innovative. Through its real-time financial data aggregation and insights platform, Finicity provides solutions for financial management, payments and credit decisioning. It is also leading the development and promotion of industry standards. The company has developed more than 16,000 bank integrations, with the vast majority through connections that provide access to formatted bank data, improving information access and accuracy. Finicity is the winner of API World’s 2016 Finance API of the Year.
About MortgageHippo:
MortgageHippo works with lenders to devise and implement their digital mortgage strategies using its borrower-centric digital lending platform. The MortgageHippo platform allows lenders to deliver a modern borrowing experience, improve borrower conversions, significantly reduce origination costs and integrate with other innovative technologies. MortgageHippo’s platform is fully customizable to lender preferences and configurable to lenders’ workflows and processes. For more, visit www.mortgagehippo.com.
As part of American Banker’s “Best Fintechs to Work For” list, Steve Smith, founder and CEO, said that he seeks out the opinions of his workforce on a more frequent basis. Once a month he has a catered lunch with every employee whose birthday falls in that month. “I say, ‘Today you can ask any question you want and I’ll do my best to answer it.’ It’s a conversation with no framework or objective.” To read the full article, click here.
As part of American Banker’s “Best Fintechs to Work For” list, Steve Smith, founder and CEO, said that helping employees understand that they are providing a service that can change lives for the better creates a positive feedback loop. “You get people who are passionate about that, and when you bring passion to the workplace, that’s a great thing.” To read the full article, click here.