The funny thing is though, the market (especially the banking industry), tends to favor the tried and true. Why? Inertia I suppose. Companies do what they do – and get a bit itchy if you even hint at changing things up. At Cogent Road good software means applications stuffed with innovative functionality (read “stuff that never existed before”) which helps businesses get more done with fewer resources. And quite frankly this scares the crap out of our potential clients.

Case in point: Our AVAIL software. Rewind to February 2008.

My partner and I work closely with mortgage loan originators. While our Funding Suite application was designed to help these originators legitimately improve the qualifying ability of each applicant – many applicants simply could not qualify. After receiving the bad news, the applicant had nothing left but to walk out the door – without an inkling of what to do next. So about two years ago we began wondering if we could we create an application to help originators hang on to declined applicants until they eventually qualified. It was magic canvas time.

If this application was going to work it needed to generate a clear roadmap leading declined applicants to mortgage qualifying status in the shortest time possible. If not, these applicants would continue to drift about, or waste money with nefarious credit repair firms or futilely apply to other mortgage companies. By showing them the best actions to take right now, we could focus their energy – and get them qualified fast.

After burning through boxes of “scented” (my favorite!) whiteboard markers – we fleshed out a software application ultimately called Avail. It would eventually become the industry’s only automated mortgage qualifying assistant. It worked with the applicant for an entire year – providing four status reviews and updated strategies along the way. Clients used the software (in cooperation with their mortgage originator) to discover learn new behaviors that would legitimately improve the credit scores. Avail examined their credit accounts and revealed the types of questions mortgage lenders would ask about specific accounts in their credit. The software told them how to answer and what documentation they needed ready. Avail even showed the applicant how to get out from under their current credit card debt in the shortest time with the least amount of cash. It was an amazing application.

We expected huge results when we launched Avail in July, 2008. Instead what happened was, well –nothing. Did originators get it? Nope. Did they show it to declined applicants? Nope. Avail elicited some interest during demonstrations, only to be ignored in unison by our clients.

Turns out, like most new software applications, Avail simply took a while to catch on.

Flash forward. Today as a group, our clients enroll thousands of happy applicants every month into Avail. Large percentages of these initially declined applicants qualify for their new mortgage within six to nine months. In fact, we recently received a call directly from an applicant who had tracked us down simply to say thank you for building the software. Are you kidding me?

I love the software business.

BTW: Click here if you want to see a video demo of the Avail product.

Credit Proofreading: A Referral Strategy

Although Funding Suite introduced credit proofreading tools to the mortgage industry almost two years ago – its seems that it only recently caught on. I imagine that tightening credit requirements require mortgage originators to help more and more applicants legitimately and quickly raise credit scores.

This is impossible without good credit proofreading technology. I’m happy to see a lot more originators embracing these tools and using them to offer a valuable service to their applicants.

In a recent article published in The Niche Report magazine, I wrote about a strategy to significantly increase referral business by correctly positioning credit proofreading to each and every loan applicant. By the volume of e-mail I’ve already received, it appears to be the right strategy for these challenging times.

I’ve posted a copy of the article for you here.

Good luck and please e-mail or comment here with any success stories you may have.

In this post I’ll describe what the Recovery Strategy is, and why it can dramatically improve any mortgage originators’ business. In my next post, I’ll explain how you can easily implement a Recovery Strategy in your business.

Recovery is the concept of using software to “recover” initially declined applicants. Using a Recovery Strategy will qualify (recover) 15% – 20% of your initially declined applicants immediately – and the remaining applicants sometime within the next 12 months. Further, you will be able to do this without any additional cost or resources – and with very little extra work.

Phase One Recovery: Saving 15% – 20% of your initially declined applicants.
Upon the initial credit review, the loan is usually lost either because the applicant’s scores are simply too low. These low scores may disqualify the applicant altogether, or they may indicate a rate and/or terms unacceptable to the prospective borrower. Either way, you’re forced to disengage from the applicant.

An originator using the Recovery Strategy realizes that 15% to 20% of mortgage scores are actually calculated incorrectly due to credit data errors or credit usage errors. By using credit proofreading software, applicants in this category are instantly identified and then moved to a processor trained to resolve these issues immediately, which provides a new qualifying credit score within 24 to 72 hours.

It’s important to remember that these recovered applicants never left the qualifying pipeline – they were simply moved to Phase One Recovery. Through the process the applicants are positively impacted by a level of professionalism and qualifying expertise in the originator’s business that will generate additional word of mouth business. This is a very pleasant side effect of using a Recovery strategy.

Phase Two Recovery: Saving the remaining 80% of initially declined applicants.
After investing time and money to attract an applicant to your office the last thing you want to do is to disengage from any applicant – even those which can not be immediately recovered. Now you don’t have to. For the first time, software makes it possible to nurture these applicants to qualifying status over the next twelve moths without any effort on the part of the originator. Even better, this turn-key, software driven “mortgage qualifying” service can be sold to your applicants, generating a profit up front.

Instead of sending your declined applicants away, instead enroll them your own private, secured program that will educate them about mortgage qualifying and even give them a step by step plan toward better credit health. Without any effort by the originator, the client receives twelve months of ongoing education, coaching and guidance to help them achieve qualifying status. The moment they do, the system notifies the originator so that the loan process can begin.

How much additional income would you receive by qualifying an immediate 20% of your initially declined applicants? How pleased would your remaining declines be to discover you can offer them a personal credit health program to help them qualify within the next 12 months?

The Recovery Strategy is made possible only because new software has been invented to deliver it. Its free and available for originators right now. Its very easy to actually implement an effective Recovery Strategy in your mortgage business.

The risk I’m referring to is the so called Authorized User account, a ridiculous legacy based credit reporting methodology that allows a borrower’s credit score to be calculated using someone else’s payment history. Saying it another way, a bank grants a mortgage to a borrower whose credit report contains the tradelines and payment records of other people. While this would seem incredulous, its common mortgage lending practice.

Authorized user accounts occur when a credit card account holder asks for a credit card to give to someone else. This practice makes sense as its quite common for one to give their spouse or child a card. But what doesn’t make sense is the way in which these new cards (called “authorized user” accounts) are reported by the credit bureaus.

To illustrate this lunacy further, let me share an actual example.  I’ve had an American Express card since 1990, I charge a good amount on it every month and have always paid on time. My credit report reflects this account, which seasoning and payment record boost my credit score. Years after I opened this account I got married and requested an American Express card for my wife. Although she has no income and does not pay for this credit account, her credit file now contains a tradeline that reflects a credit card opened since 1990 with excellent payment history; basically an exact copy of my credit history with American Express shows up on her credit report. And her credit score gets the same exact boost as mine does – even though she is not the one responsible for this card.

Maybe your initial response is that it doesn’t matter because she is my wife, or that it’s not a big deal because if we apply for a mortgage loan we’re looked at as a couple. Well, you’re not alone in your thinking because when I’ve discussed this with banks they express the same idea. But the logic is fatally flawed and these authorized user accounts create a very big problem. Allow me one more example – this one fictitious, yet illustrative nonetheless.

Let’s assume my wife and I are applying jointly for a mortgage loan. Let’s also assume my wife is the authorized user on several of my accounts, each with a good payment history. However, in this example let’s also assume I have some derogatory accounts, maybe even a bankruptcy. Now the bank, knowing we are applying jointly, decide to approve the mortgage based my wife’s good credit. (This too is common mortgage lending practice). However, what has the bank actually done? Since my wife’s credit is based on authorized user accounts she actually has no real credit of her own – but what she does have is a “subset” of my credit – just the good stuff. What really happened is the bank gave a go decision based entirely on my few good tradelines, while completely disregarding all the derogatory history. It’s unlikely the bank would have made this loan if they understood how the authorized user accounts were masking true credit risk.

Cogent Road has spent the past year researching this phenomenon – and I’ll share some rather alarming data points.

1. More than 3 out of 10 people  have authorized user accounts in the credit files
2. 2 out of 100 people have a credit score raised by more than 10% because of someone else’s credit. This means that someone whose actual credit history should reflect a 648 credit score, would instead produce a 720 score for lenders.
3. Most shocking of all: 1 out of 200 people actually would have no score if you discard the authorized user accounts. In these cases banks are approving mortgage loans for people with absolutely no credit history at all.

Today’s mortgage portfolios must be screened to asses which loans were approved based on credit scores elevated by authorized user accounts. These loans should then be routed to a call center that can regularly monitor the borrower’s ability to pay during this foreclosure crisis. More importantly, every new loan should be screened to detect how much influence authorized user accounts have on the credit score. Depending on the results, some applications (regardless of a high credit score) should be declined altogether – while others would be sidelined for review prior to approval.

The good news is that new technologies can help banks do this immediately.

Yet, in the course of a typical business day I’m reminded how little mortgage professionals truly understand about credit and credit scoring. And naturally, if those in the business lack understanding, how much more the typical mortgage loan applicant. So once again, I find myself behind the keyboard pounding out banality, hoping to educate the world one blog at a time.

This month my company signed a rather large mortgage origination shop. This company is doing well in a very difficult market, and as I’ve come to know some of the executives, I can understand why. Loan applicants are treated with respect, and the company pays for all prequalifying expenses. The company has solidly trained loan officers and even an executive solely responsible for corporate strategy. Its an honor to be supplying their credit management software.

Yet, in an operation this adept, this talented and this experienced, I must admit I was not overly surprised to discover how little they knew about credit proofreading – and the legitimate process of credit rescoring. It’s a fact that 15% of this company’s loan applicants that walked out the door without a mortgage each month  could have been approved. Why? The sad fact is that the loan officers had no idea that these applicants credit scores were calculated incorrectly due to errors in their credit files. Errors they could have resolved in less than three days – providing the applicant with an accurate, properly calculated credit score.

The very good news is that this mortgage origination shop now “gets it” – and they are rapidly embracing the credit proofreading concept. Top management is taking the time to learn how to use Funding Suite’s credit proofreading tools which instantly identify harmful credit errors. And they are creating business practices to teach their loan officers to properly communicate this new capacity to borrowers.

So it goes, that each month this firms loan applicants will be served by loan officers possessing state of the art credit proofreading tools. And each month, 15% more of them will qualify for a home mortgage.

Here’s the article

It’s a good example of how credit data errors (though no fault of our own) can seriously damage our credit health. Unfortunately, the scale of this data error affected as many as one million people.

This one will be corrected, because its sheer size created its visibility. The danger with most credit data errors is that they go undetected – and thus unresolved. This is why the credit proofreading process is so important. Make sure you get your credit report proofread by a competent mortgage originator before you begin the mortgage qualifying process. Don’t pay more for your mortgage than necessary simply because undetected data errors harmed your credit score.

Here they are, in no particular order.

Alan Vogan
First Lending Solutions
Riverside, California
(951) 317-3165
I’ve known Alan for years – and in the spirit of full disclosure, Alan personally handles all of my mortgage needs. When I need to better understand a new Fannie Mae underwriting issue, or the impact of new legislation on lending practices, I’ll call Alan. While its true that he understands the business of mortgage lending better than most, his true strength is an uncanny ability to see things from an applicant’s perspective. I recently referred a friend to Alan and his experience sums this up perfectly. While Alan was working on my friends loan he did the unthinkable and sent my friend to a competitor (Bank Of America) because he knew the bank had a very good loan program. Turns out that BofA didn’t offer the program as advertised, and Alan now counts my friend as a client.

Kevin Glackin
Village Capital
Mount Laurel, NJ
(856)-252-1517
Kevin has a very good understanding of mortgage credit – and is well versed in credit proofreading. Recently, credit proofreading discovered that the single derogatory item on an applicant’s credit report was involved a credit card the applicant used every day. However, though the card had the applicant’s name on it, he was actually an authorized user on the card. This means that the true card holder (his brother), had simply added a card to his account and then gave it to the applicant. The applicant’s brother was going through a difficult time and became late on the payments. Kevin’s credit proofreading tools revealed that since the applicant was only a user on the card, the late payments belonged to his brother, not the applicant. Kevin used his credit proofreading tools to permanently remove this derogatory account from the file in days. And, are you ready for this? The applicant’s credit score increased 240 points. Now that’s service.

Christian Lombardini
United Fidelity Mortgage
Nashville, Tennessee
(615) 383-5626
Christian is another one of my favorite loan officers because he consistently puts the client first. Sometimes this means working with a client for months (at his own expense) until the client is financially prepared to make a mortgage loan commitment. In one recent experience a client wanted a mortgage, but needed to increase his down payment amount. Christian consulted with the applicant and helped him devise a savings plan. Christian also used his credit proofreading skills to improve the applicant’s credit health at the same time. After following Christian’s advice, the client was able to buy his new home nine months ahead of schedule. The capper was that the applicant was referred by a real estate agent, and Christian went out of his way to make sure the agent received the all the credit. Nicely done.

Shane Jackson
ENG Lending
Little Rock, Arkansas
(501) 907-1126
Shane is another expert in credit proofreading, which means simply that he knows how to use software to detect and eliminate errors in credit files that damage credit health. When our company was interviewed by a leading mortgage publication about how credit proofreading helps borrowers, the magazine also interviewed Shane. Shane mentioned that more than 10% of declined applicants can be turned into approvals by simply proofreading their credit files, and removing errors. Imagine a couple declined for their first home simply because their credit score had been incorrectly evaluated due to errors within the credit file. Guys like Shane won’t let that happen.

If you are looking for a mortgage, I’d heartily recommend these folks. They’ll take care of you. If you are a real estate agent, and if you live near one of these mortgage professionals, do your client a favor and pass along one of these names. Tell them the Caped Crusader sent you.

Most mortgage clients understand that their credit report influences their loan and its terms. For many, then, credit review and improvement can mean the world — not to mention a favorable mortgage.

For brokers, credit proofreading — or credit review and rescoring — can be an effective referral-generating opportunity. This service helps you identify errors in your clients’ credit reports, as well as ways they can correct the errors.

In fact, many FICO scores could be wrong. A 2004 U.S. Public Interest Research Group report found that 25 percent of credit reports contain “errors serious enough to deny consumers access to credit.” This could mean that one of in four
applicants may be turned down because their credit score was wrongly and unnecessarily lowered in error.

Another type of error that can deflate FICO scores and that often is more damaging involves credit-use. These errors  often appear in different forms, which makes them hard to detect. Worse, consumers who seemingly make good short-term financial decisions inadvertently commit credit use errors without realizing it.

In fact, many consumers use credit in ways that needlessly lower their scores. Some have too many credit cards. Others don’t have enough. The same goes for credit balances. It all depends on how the credit fits into their profiles and how Fair Isaac and Co. interprets consumers’ new credit.

Mortgage brokers can help their clients identify these errors, however, and work toward reconciling them and increasing their credit scores. To offer a credit-review and rescoring service, you’ll likely want software that detects any hint of data or usage errors within a credit profile. The software scans an applicants’ entire credit profiles each time you order a credit report. Results are then neatly categorized by the type of error, with credit-use errors separated from
data errors.

Once detected, these tools tell you how to fix the errors and how many more points your clients will get by doing so. With the help of a credit-reporting agency, your clients often can see higher credit scores in just three days. When you position your credit review in a way that presents you as a qualifying expert, you’re moving down the referral runway. Taking the next step and demonstrating that you can improve your clients’ credit health can enhance your referrals.

People are concerned with every detail of their financial lives, and with credit proofreading, their credit profile becomes the one financial area in which you can help. And because healthier credit profiles often mean higher credit scores and better mortgage terms, many clients go out of their way to send you their friends and family members.

The problem I have with the article is that the casual reader is left feeling helpless, almost at the mercy of a random credit score attached to hit or miss credit card use. The fact is, many mortgage brokers use advanced credit proofreading software that can identify exactly where you may be going sideways with your credit use.

Don’t feel bad if you don’t know how your use (or non use) of credit cards is helping (or hurting) your credit score. How could you know? And for that matter, those that say they know are only guessing. Credit use is always considered in context of ones complete credit profile. This means that opening up a brand new credit card may help your score – or hurt it. It all depends on how many cards you currently have, how often you use them and to what extent.

The bottom line is that the impact of your present credit use on your credit scoring is complicated. But it doesn’t need to be confusing. I’m suggesting that the best time to select and visit with a mortgage professional is before you are ready to buy or refinance your home. Pick up the phone and talk with a few of them – find out what they know about credit scoring – and ask them about their technical ability to scan your credit files for errors. Can they detect the issues in the way you use credit that are hurting your scores? Can they offer suggestions to improve your credit use in order to strengthen your scores? And can they scan your credit file for data errors that may be unknowingly harming your credit score?

These mortgage professionals exist. I know, because more than 20,000 of them use our software nationwide to perform these services every day. A one hour visit with anyone of them may result not only I a stronger credit profile, but also in the best credit education you’ve ever had.

Using a credit repair service may well cost you more than $500 in up front fees. Instead, I’ll show you how to do exactly what they would do for you for free. And faster too. Consider the $240 you’ve given to charity a chance to put 50% of the money you would have given to the credit repair firm to much better use. 

Let’s take the mystery out of credit repair right now. All a credit repair company does for you is dispute information on your credit report. This means they will tell the credit bureaus when information is wrong. Within 45 to 90 days, if the information really is wrong, then it will be corrected. That’s it. Ironically, in the time it takes you find and pay for a credit repair company, you could have completed the task with the bureaus yourself. And for free.

Credit repair companies prey on ignorance, on consumers that don’t know how to do what I am going to plainly show you how to do. Because the process seems difficult, and involves highly personal credit reporting information, consumers blindly trust these firms and unfortunately pay whatever they ask. The fact that some credit repair firms hide behind a lawyer title makes the process all the more deceiving. The most insidious aspect of this somewhat shady business practice is that the company implies it will somehow give you a better credit score than you rightfully deserve. This is a lie – and, regrettably is the biggest reason people throw lots of money at these firms.

Again, all a credit repair company can actually do for you is dispute wrong information in your credit file. And who knows whether something is wrong in your credit file better than you? Even if you hired a credit repair firm, you would still have to tell them where the errors are. Let me say here that some firms will suggest you dispute every derogatory item on your credit report – and make the lender prove whether its true or not. Don’t fall for this. Even if the lender doesn’t respond within the time allowed, the information will only be changed in the short term. (which renders the costly improvement effort useless). You see, the next time the lender reports to the bureau, your accurate derogatory information will reappear.

The really good news about disputing wrong information is that all three credit bureaus (TransUnion, Equifax and Experian) now use a free online dispute process – which means you can review your credit file line by line, search your file for errors and dispute any you find without picking up the phone or even mailing a single letter. The whole process takes a few minutes and costs a big fat zero. And you can do it once every single year – which, by the way, isn’t a bad habit.

To check your credit report for errors simply go to www.annualcreditreport.com where you can order a credit report for free once a year. Make sure you review all three bureaus since each is an independent company and any one of the three may be reporting your payment history in error. While reviewing the report, each bureau gives you the option to dispute information. Each uses a slightly different dispute method, but all are easy nonetheless.

When reviewing tradelines look for any accounts that are not yours. Keep in mind, some may report using creditor names with which you aren’t familiar, but you may well be the account holder. Look also at the inquiries – has a company pulled your credit without your permission. If so, you can get the inquiry removed. Look for balance on credit cards reporting incorrectly as well as high credit limits. Creditors are notorious for misreporting credit limits – and if they are reporting a limit that’s too low it may hurt your credit score. Ditto for balances reported erroneously high.

In the end look for anything inaccurate and use the online process to let the bureaus know about it. The bureaus will contact the creditor for you and verify if what you are saying is correct. At no cost to you, the bureau will update your file to reflect the accurate information. And, in addition to saving a lot of money, you’ll learn a lot about your credit file – which is a rather nice side benefit.

There is more, however. Technically competent mortgage brokers can make very dramatic and legitimate increases in your credit score in just a few days. I’ll blog about this later.