MBA Premier Member Profile: Early Warning
(One in a continuing series of Premier Members of the Mortgage Bankers Association.)
Early Warning is Creating the Future of Payments by delivering innovative payment and risk solutions to financial institutions nationwide.
For more than 25 years, Early Warning has been a leader in technology that helps protect and advance the financial system. We serve a diverse network of 2,300 financial institutions, government entities and payment companies. Our product solutions enable real-time funds availability for a variety of payment types through our payments network.
Early Warning’s Asset Search and Verification Service for Home Loans provides financial institutions and Government-Sponsored Enterprises an efficient and automated solution for responding to asset verification inquiry requests. The service provides systemically verified liquid asset information available for both origination and securitization phases of the loan life-cycle. It is fueled by the company’s National Shared Database Resource–the industry’s most current and accurate source of collaborative financial data. It includes account location, ownership status and up to ninety days of balance and transaction history. By leveraging cross-bank data to systematically verify asset information, loan decisions are simplified as well as expedited to the benefit of lenders, the GSEs and borrowers.
To learn more visit www.EarlyWarning.com/asv.
What sets Early Warning’s new asset verification offering apart from other similar services in the market?
There are no similar services available today for lenders or GSEs. Early Warning is owned and governed by seven of the largest U.S. banks and serves a consortium of banks across the country. Unlike firms today that use screen scraping technologies to aggregate data from consumer accounts, we work directly with the banks to collect and systematically verified liquid asset information to provide certainty on assets reported. It’s very similar to the consumer credit bureau model.
Is the data you collect what forms the basis of your asset verification reports?
Yes. We act as a trusted custodian to our consortium members’ data and when a report is requested from a participating institution, we provide a complete view of the customer’s account information, going back 90 days. There is no need to depend on the consumer to accurately disclose and provide sufficient evidence of financials. By digitizing the verification of bank account details, it replaces an otherwise manual process more efficiently and accurately while reducing fraud risk. Furthermore, banks that utilize our electronic reports receive advantages from secondary market investors who gain greater confidence in the loans they purchase because of the automation and verification of assets utilized for the original loan..
What exactly does Early Warning verify for lenders?
Today, we verify borrower assets, a critical component in the loan underwriting process. But our goal is to continue building out our robust infrastructure to allow us to bring together all constituents in order to drive a more efficient home loan process. Asset verification is our starting point, but what we have created is an integrated capability that allows multiple data providers to offer verification for all of the elements that lenders are forced to verify in a piecemeal fashion today, and do it through a single, electronic platform. Such an integrated solution will one day provide a consumer risk score, similar in many ways to the credit scores provided by credit bureaus today, that will provide a more robust diagnostic measure of an individual’s true borrowing capability.
Who can participate in what you have created?
Any U.S. bank of any size is welcome to join the consortium and access data, but we operate on a give-to-get model, meaning that the bank must contribute data in order to request it. We hope more banks will join and participate in the development and innovation process that will turn this service into an even greater benefit for all parties involved in the home finance process.
Why did your company join the Mortgage Bankers Association?
The Mortgage Bankers Association provides a platform for Early Warning to connect and interact with a diverse network of mortgage banking executives. Because MBA is the only association representing all segments of the real estate finance industry, we understood the significance of the organization membership, thought leadership and progressive focus to support its members.
How has being a Premier level member benefited your company?
As a Premier-level member, MBA provides multiple platforms to connect with the mortgage banking community. The annual MBA events and online resources provide unprecedented networking opportunities with fellow MBA members and industry leaders. We are excited to take advantage of what the membership has to offer particularly with the marketing opportunities, brand recognition and continuing education opportunities..
(MBA Premier Member Profiles are a service provided by the Mortgage Bankers Association and MBA NewsLink as a service to MBA Premier Members. Publication does not constitute an endorsement of a particular company, product or service. For more information about the MBA Premier Member program, contact Julie Dychkewich at jdychkewich@mortgagebankers.org or 202/557-2779.)
