5 Tips to Navigate a High-Rate Market with Smarter Verifications

In an uncertain market it's more important than ever for lenders to be strategic about their workflow in order to maximize efficiency. These strategies include everything from accelerating the loan process to reduce application lifecycle, consolidating vendors, and finding cost saving techniques. Here are five tips to navigate a high-rate market with smarter verifications and why lenders are choosing Truework.

1. Make efficiency the standard with automation

During market fluctuations and higher interest rates, chances are you’re experiencing lower loan volumes than your typical fiscal year. While lower loan volumes are difficult in the short term, they can create the rare opportunity to spend time building a more durable process and business efficiencies aimed at growth in the long term. When it comes to income and employment verification, manually completing verifications can be both a waste of money and your processors’ time. Automation improves accuracy by streamlining manual hand-offs that oftentimes introduce the risk of human error. Automating as much of the process as possible will not only improve cost-efficiency but it will also speed up verification, providing a benefit to both lenders as well as borrowers. By making efficiency the standard through automation, once loan volumes pick back up again, you’ll be on the right track to manage business growth for the long term.

With Truework: Lenders have multiple verification methods that maximize coverage automatically to help adapt to market volatility.

2. Know what you're paying for & consolidate resources

Income and employment verification invoices are notorious for being difficult to understand, this guide to understanding income verification pricing helps make that easier. While the market rates continue to rise many lenders and investors are looking for ways to reduce spending and cut out 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 review your list of platform solutions.

With Truework: Our one-stop platform includes partnerships with other data providers like Plaid as well as over 20 additional third-party providers, helping customers drastically simplify their VOI/E ecosystem with transparent pricing and no hidden fees.

3. Diversify data sources to expand coverage

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 a range of borrowers who may not fit into the standard qualified applicants bucket.

With Truework: Truework's verification methods include our Instant network, user-permissioned payroll sharing, automated document review, and outreach research team for expedited verifications.

4. Don't let internal reorganization affect output

Market changes often catalyze internal restructuring, whether to handle additional loan volume or to prioritize new strategic initiatives. Training new employees on vendors and integrations takes time away from day-to-day job duties, especially if your team leaders are responsible for onboarding. Consider vendors that allow you to scale instantly without needing to hire additional processors when the market rebounds. Lean on workflows that are repeatable and enable teams to ramp quickly. Engage platforms who provide ongoing support, like training and onboarding programs, to insulate employees from any disruption during organizational restructuring.

With Truework: We provide in-depth and efficient training for your entire processing team at no extra-cost, think of Truework as an extension of your team that scales instantly. Our hands-on approach gives lenders peace of mind when considering a new vendor.

5. Flexibility in your operations and work sharing

Another process to lean into is flexibility. How can other team members pitch in if someone goes on leave, holiday, maternity, etc.? When evaluating vendors, examine what administrative controls are available and if work sharing is possible. Be flexible to changing things up if a certain process isn’t working how you expect. Design your workflows so they are easy to manage day-in-day-out throughout fluctuations.

At Truework: We know how impactful it is for supervisors to maintain visibility across their teams. No one is an island and normalizing the habit of work sharing 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 sets to get the most accurate information with the best coverage possible. Lean on repeatable workflows and learn to look for strategic partners, not just data providers. All of these taken together can help you design a successful strategy for income and employment verification in a high-rate market.

Truework's platform is designed and optimized based on maximizing coverage while reducing costs. Schedule a consultation to speak with a Truework representative and join 20 of the top 25 mortgage lenders who have already made the switch.