Designing a Successful Strategy for Income and Employment Verification in a High-Rate Market
In an uncertain market, it's more important than ever for lenders to be strategic about their workflow to stay ahead of the curve. From prioritizing vendors, accelerating the loan process, and finding cost-saving techniques.
Differentiating factors like automation should be a priority
When it comes to income and employment verification, automating as much of the process as possible will improve accuracy and speed up verification. A benefit to both lenders as well as borrowers. Automation streamlines manual hand-offs that oftentimes introduce the risk of human error. When crafting your dream workflow, you can prioritize customer experience by including instant approval at the top of your verification waterfall, reducing yet another manual step. Choosing a vendor with automated verification as part of their business model makes your process easily adaptable to market volatility.
Being cost conscious & consolidating resources
Speaking of choosing vendors, while the market rates continue to rise, many lenders and investors are finding ways of trimming the fat on unnecessary costs. Consolidating vendors down to those who meet essential needs, provide specific benefits, or come at a cheaper cost are just a few considerations to make as you look at your list of vendors. As market rates fluctuate, avoid renegotiating terms frequently to avoid price hikes from vendors who are going through similar cost-cutting decisions.
Select vendors who source data from multiple sources
While it’s necessary to consolidate down to essential vendors to be cost-conscious, it’s also important to note that you don’t want all of your eggs in one data basket. If your vendor is only pulling data from one source of truth, or they only have one method of retrieving data, that’s going to severely limit your ability to verify borrowers who may not fit into the standard qualified applicants bucket. Be conscientious of who your partner partners with. Sourcing your data from a “one-stop-shop” vendor who partners with other vendors ensures that you’ll have the best coverage, at the lowest cost.
Build systems of support internally and externally
Training your team effectively is an essential business practice in any industry, but fluctuating markets make it even more essential to your business’ longevity. Take the guesswork out of your training process. Lean on workflows that are repeatable and where teams can ramp quickly. Find partners both within and without the company and build systems of ongoing support. Consider the following questions: Does your provider have a dedicated CX team? Are they a company that can grow along with me? When considering vendors, look for a partner, not just a data provider.
Flexibility in your workflows and status sharing
Another process to lean into is flexibility. How can other team members pitch in if someone goes on leave, holiday, maternity, etc.? Lean into your administrative controls and status sharing. Nothing slows down a project like siloed teams and inflexible management. No man is an island, and normalizing the habit of sharing statuses can help balance the workload, leaving no team members overstretched or underutilized.
Learning to adapt in a high-rate market doesn’t automatically spell doom and gloom across the board. Prioritize automation to save time and money. Source data from vendors that utilize multiple data onsets to get the most accurate data with greater coverage. Lean on repeatable workflows and learn to look for partner vendors, not just data providers. And be flexible to change as it will keep your team on track. All of these taken together can help you design a successful strategy for income and employment verification in a high-rate market.
Download the five tips to stay ahead of the curve
