Key Takeaways:
- In a mortgage industry marked by high interest rates and rising home prices, lenders must navigate a low-volume environment where each lead is increasingly valuable.
- In this market, information is power. The sooner buyers know their borrowing capacities, and the quicker lenders can assess their creditworthiness, the better.
- TransUnion’s broadened mortgage soft inquiry solution, TruVision™ Early Access Soft Check, offers this by allowing lenders to start the underwriting process earlier, enabling more flexibility and control while reducing costs.
- The solution also enables more seamless future planning for when rates come down.
- On the borrower side, consumers benefit from having more certainty before credit scores are impacted.
Today’s mortgage market paints a familiar scene of high interest rates and climbing home prices, pushing affordability out of reach for many and keeping inventory low. But savvy lenders remain on the hunt for creative ways to drive business within a constrained buyer pool, ensuring their resources are well spent — while planning for more seamless refinancing when interest rates fall again.
When the market is this unpredictable, being equipped with information as early in the process as possible is critical. For buyers, this means understanding how much they can borrow — and at what terms — before a serious home search begins. For lenders, it’s about determining consumer creditworthiness early to ensure the right decisions and investments are being made.
Underwriting, expanded
It’s a classic tale: Consumer requests preapproval, lender pulls a tri-merge credit report and loan offers come flooding in from competitors — all before a serious home search can even begin. Some lenders might even hold off on the tri-merge pull to avoid losing customers to trigger offers — and put closing at risk by moving forward without the usual consumer credit insights.
With consumer eligibility for a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loan now able to be determined by a soft credit pull, TransUnion’s mortgage soft inquiry solution has been broadened to help lenders better protect their pipelines — while providing more certainty to consumers before credit scores are impacted. With TruVision™ Early Access Soft Check, you can:
- Begin the underwriting process based on soft inquiry credit reports and scores
- Reduce unnecessary upfront verifications and processing costs
- Choose to pull credit information from one, two or all three credit bureaus
- Reassure potential borrowers they can shop without the risk of harming their credit scores
And starting the underwriting process with TruVision Early Access Soft Check isn’t just applicable for GSE loans (qualified mortgages). Other mortgages — from jumbo loans, portfolio loans and non-qualified mortgages — are also eligible, allowing all lenders to improve the customer experience while enjoying increased flexibility in the underwriting process.
For some special loan products, such as VA Interest Rate Reduction Loans (VA IRRRL) and FHA Streamline Refinance loans, TruVision Early Access Soft Check enables a simpler process with no requirement for a hard credit inquiry at closing.
More control over underwriting offers key benefits
TruVision Early Access Soft Check helps lenders balance cost savings with a robust view of consumer creditworthiness — while enabling more control over underwriting. This offers several benefits, including:
- Reduced risk of losing customers to competitors’ trigger offers
- More cost-effective to wait until confident in closing to pull tri-merge reports
- Earlier access to rates and terms builds confidence and avoids surprises
TruVision Early Access Soft Check
With TruVision Early Access Soft Check, lenders can:
- Benefit from the ease and flexibility of a soft inquiry report that can also be used for initial underwriting
- Begin underwriting the loan much earlier in the process using the full credit file pulled from a single-, bi- or tri-bureau soft inquiry — which can be leveraged alongside additional information like verification of income and employment (VOIE) data
- Choose from two permissible purposes (written instructions of the consumer or in connection with a credit transaction) and provide your consumers a more streamlined user experience
- Leverage a more robust consumer view with up to 30 months of TransUnion trended credit and payment data with TransUnion’s trended credit report
- More easily access credit reports for VA IRRRL and FHA Streamline Refinance loans, with no hard inquiry required
- Reduce upfront origination costs by starting the underwriting process earlier, adding in additional data as the application progresses
In today’s competitive market, stand out with a customer-centric approach to mortgage lending. To learn more about TruVision Early Access Soft Check, reach out to your TransUnion representative or credit reseller.
