Committed to the digital future

Two years ago, we knew we wanted to move in a digital-first direction. Data quality, speed and security were all important factors. The mortgage industry sets a high bar for financial data that’s used to underwrite a loan, so we needed a digital provider with rigorous standards. Knowing that Finicity’s open banking platform (now wholly owned by Mastercard), leads the industry with most of their traffic coming through direct data connections, we turned to them for next-gen solutions. With their help, we transitioned to a digital asset verification process, integrating it into our underwriting technology system.

But getting to this point was not a completely smooth ride. Transitioning loan officers to a digital process was a challenge, even though it added efficiency to their workflows and scaled up their pipelines. The legacy methods of verifying a borrower’s assets, income and employment are on their way out, but they’re still hanging on. Paper documents, phone calls, emails, structured data files and legacy digital technologies have their place, but the most efficient and secure way to verify borrower information is through direct data connections. 

Once a borrower has given their permission, the bank provides a token that can be used to access the borrower’s financial data directly. That means credentials are not stored, making the process more secure while enabling direct access to checking and saving account data. We can also refresh that data as needed, without having to go back and ask for renewed permission or track down more documents. 

Once we had asset verification in place, we launched verification of income and employment within our platform. With the borrower’s permission, Mastercard’s open banking services provide direct connections to payroll and transaction data to quickly verify income and employment. Mastercard’s connections offer us greater accuracy and less risk because we’re getting the data from the source in real time.