In the never-ending quest to shave weeks, days and hours from the time needed to approve a mortgage, lenders would rather not have to pick up the phone — let alone leave their loan origination platform — to verify an applicant’s employment and income.
That makes the integration of automated income verification platform Truework with ICE Mortgage Technology’s Encompass loan origination platform newsworthy. Nearly half of all U.S. mortgages are originated using Encompass, and Truework’s employment and income data network provides instant verification for more than 35 million employees, the company said.
Truework’s API-enabled integration gives Encompass administrators “plug-and-play functionality,” making Truework “one of the easiest integrations in the Encompass ecosystem,” Ryan Sandler, CEO and co-founder of Truework, said in a statement.
Sandler told Inman that Encompass is Truework’s first integration with a mortgage loan origination system, but that the company is pursuing partnerships with other mortgage technology providers.
Employment and income verification can slow mortgage approvals down by days or even a week, he said. Lenders that have the best technology have the fastest processes, he said, allowing them “to reduce the approval cycle by days, and also reducing paperwork for the borrower,” Sandler said.
Truework claims to have the second-largest instant verification network in the U.S., and to be the largest verification provider for small businesses, thanks to an exclusive partnership with Gusto announced in April. If a loan applicant’s records aren’t accessible through Truework’s instant verification network — which also connects to Zenefits, UKG and Paylocity — the company can still verify income and employment for lenders using automated and human processes.
Competitors include Equifax Work Solutions, which offers lenders the ability to retrieve all employers within the previous 12, 24 or 36 months, through a service called The Work Number. The Work Number database, which has nearly 115 million active employee records from more than 1 million employers, was queried 223 million times last year.
Other providers of employment and income verification include Experian-owned CCC Verify, EmpInfo, Finicity, and InVerify.