Lenders Just Want to Lend: How Truework Is Building for the Future of Verification

Everything lenders do—whether it’s addressing inefficiencies in their processes or meeting complex institutional and investor requirements—is ultimately about making it easier to say “yes” to qualified borrowers. Yet one of the most critical parts of the loan process, income and employment verification, has historically been a major barrier. We recently sat down with our Head of Product, Zachary Ennenga, to discuss.

You’ve been at Truework for a few years now. What’s the most important thing you’ve learned?

Zach: It may sound simple, but what I’ve learned is that, at the end of the day, lenders just want to lend. Everything they’re doing to address inefficiencies in their processes or to meet (sometimes difficult) institutional requirements is to make it easier for the organization to lend to consumers. As a result, I spend every day thinking about how to build a solution like Truework to remove barriers to streamlined lending. 

How has Truework done that?

Zach: Truework has focused heavily on verification automation–or what I like to call verification orchestration. We found that verifications were an extremely painful part of the loan process for both lenders and borrowers, and that, if done poorly, they prevented lenders from lending to borrowers. Lenders struggled with multiple data vendors, poor data quality, difficult data aggregation, and compliance with GSE guidelines. Borrowers hated being asked over and over for the same information about how much they make and where they’ve worked, due to a lack of a streamlined process on the lender’s part. 

So Truework said: What if all major data methods could be on one platform? What if we orchestrated those methods to determine the best path to finding the relevant borrower data? What if we guaranteed a high bar of data quality on every report? What if we provided a standardized report for every use case, so lenders could receive complete verification and proceed to the next step in the loan process with ease? What if we made it so borrowers only needed to provide their information once? 

We built a solution that does all of that, helping lenders significantly reduce manual effort, improve their borrower experience, and lend more efficiently.

Where is Truework going next?

Zach: There is always room to do more, especially in this industry, which is ripe for innovation. When I reflected on what Truework focused on primarily, it was largely on efficiency gains and production cost savings. And that made sense because lenders were struggling in a down market. I’m happy to learn that, in 2026, lenders are finally starting to turn a corner on that and are becoming profitable again. But then it becomes less about reducing costs and more about controlling costs–ensuring that they can stay profitable in the long run.

I go back to what I said earlier: Lenders want to lend. If we remove the barriers to that goal, we help them in the long run. Truework has focused primarily on operational barriers in the early stages of the loan, but now we’re looking to do more. We started looking at what else it could mean to “control costs”.

We zeroed in on a later step: the selling of the loan. We know that lenders aim to offload their loans to investors to free up their books to loan more. But we also know that this process can be highly stressful, tedious, and confusing when trying to adhere to investor guidelines, many of which hinge on accurate and complete verification data. The back-and-forth nature of the process eats up the loan teams’ time.

Truework is going to focus on how to make adhering to investor guidelines–especially those of GSEs–much simpler. We’re saying: What if our product not only orchestrated multiple methods but was a custom waterfall mapped directly to GSE guidelines? What if we directly connected to systems and calculators and ran QA checks for the lender? What if we collected only relevant data from the borrower and loan files weren’t bloated with irrelevant information? What if the report came back with a simple yes or no on whether the income qualifies the loan to sell? That’s the next evolution of Truework’s product, and we’re excited to share more in 2026 as the product develops. 

Where is the mortgage industry going next?

Zach: That’s tough to predict. For me, I leverage what I’ve seen on the Truework side to think about what the mortgage industry should focus on next to lend better. What’s becoming clear is that consumers’ income types are rapidly diversifying. Gone are the days of purely W-2 workers. With the rise of the gig economy and self-employed individuals, in addition to existing additional income streams such as government programs, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for lenders to verify income and employment easily, and especially with one vendor or one streamlined process. 

That’s where I think the next evolution of Truework’s product comes into play. I mentioned earlier that we want to collect only relevant data from the borrower. That includes collecting relevant data across all combinations of income stream types in a single, streamlined experience. If you’re able to integrate that with the backend platform to verify data accuracy and maintain compliance with investor guidelines, I believe you’ve found the silver bullet to maintain production efficiencies, control costs, and keep lending.

Conclusion

Lenders don’t enter this industry because they’re passionate about navigating fragmented verification workflows or interpreting ever-changing investor guidelines. They do it to help borrowers secure financing and to keep their organizations lending confidently and profitably.

As income types diversify and loan sale requirements grow more complex, the mortgage industry needs infrastructure that simplifies, rather than complicates, the verification process. The next evolution of Truework is focused on exactly that.