New Tools Help Mortgage Lenders Reduce Fraud
Identity theft and other borrower-based fraud techniques are becoming increasingly more sophisticated, exacting a much greater toll on profits for mortgage lenders. Compliance and misrepresentation tools alone are no longer adequate to address these threats. In response, CoreLogic, the leading provider of mortgage risk assessment and fraud prevention solutions, has developed IdentityPro to help clients better manage borrower fraud. IdentityPro assesses a borrower’s likelihood to commit the type of mortgage fraud most likely to cause financial loss by using state-of-the-art behavioral analysis that reveals suspicious patterns.“It’s a more robust engine than other products out in the marketplace right now, because it goes beyond the basics of Social Security number verification and identifying misrepresentation.†said Felice Kesselring, director of product development for CoreLogic. “It diagnoses a borrower’s buying and living patterns, looking for the type of activity that can be correlated to the risk associated specifically with fraud for profit.“
IdentityPro works by modeling borrower transactions and other relevant data to more precisely determine borrower risk. In addition, IdentityPro includes compliance and misrepresentation capabilities to spot identity theft, straw borrowers and owner-occupancy misrepresentation. It promotes proactive risk management practices, quickly identifies then minimizes borrower-related loan risk, stops fraudulent loans before they are funded, accelerates decision making and lowers operating costs.
“We can detect patterns that are correlated to flipping activities and higher risk loans giving the mortgage lender a broader base of information about an individual loan or a loan pool. This information enables them to adjust their lending practices accordingly,†said Kesselring.
Lenders can increase production and pull-thru rates, streamlining the approval process by applying IdentityPro during loan application, underwriting or pre-funding review to spot a borrower’s living, buying and selling patterns. The easy-to-use report ordering interface and reports provide alerts for questionable activity including transient behavior, owner occupancy, property value change and Social Security number activity. These alerts and flags act as guideposts to speed review and decision-making.
“In an environment where real estate fraud has become one of the mortgage banking industry’s most destructive concerns, our goal is to offer lenders a more efficient and certain path to isolating borrower risk with the highest potential for impacting loan loss,†said Anthony Romano, Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing for CoreLogic. “Using IdentityPro, lenders can reduce write-offs due to early payment defaults, prevent identity theft, expand production capacity without increasing staffing, offer better prices and reduce or avoid loan origination costs.â€
Key borrower management components of IdentityPro are included in CoreLogic’s LoanSafe™ product suite. LoanSafe delivers a 360-degree assessment of collateral risk by simultaneously evaluating the agent, the borrower and the property.
About CoreLogic:
Sacramento, Calif.-based CoreLogic is the leading provider of collateral risk-analysis and management technology and services to the U.S. mortgage banking industry. Since 1997, the mortgage industry has relied on CoreLogic to enable risk management and workflow process support. Using CoreLogic technology, mortgage originators and investors are able to increase profitability and loan quality by making more informed lending and investment decisions. The CoreLogic suite of property information tools provides the data, comprehensive geographic coverage, ease-of-use and accessibility the mortgage industry needs. For more information about CoreLogic, visit www.corelogic.com.