Experian and Nationwide to improve mortgage application process

Typically, a mortgage decision is subject to verification of income. This can create uncertainty and delays for both customers and brokers. By incorporating Experian’s Work Report, Nationwide’s mortgage applications are set to become faster as the income verification process becomes automated.

Nationwide uses Experian’s Work Report for income verification

Work Report is a digital verification service that allows consumers to consent to digitally share their payroll information with another organisation. It connects an employer’s payroll data with the lender, to provide direct confirmation of a consumer’s eligibility based on their net and gross income, as well as their employment status and tenure, in a matter of seconds.

Using Experian’s Work Report income and employment verification service, Nationwide is able to digitally and instantly confirm homebuyers’ declared income, removing the need for applicants to provide manual income proofs, such as copies of payslips. This process enables Nationwide to quickly obtain a highly accurate view of the applicant’s income.

Alongside its recent expansion of automated valuation models, Work Report enables a move towards instant offers, in minutes rather than days, improving efficiency and certainty for customers and mortgage brokers.

Experian collaborated closely with Nationwide for more than two years on this project, developing a payslip categorisation capability that manages data and helps with automation for the benefit of users.

Nationwide aims to simplify the homebuying experience for both brokers and customers by removing the need for proofs and introducing automated verifications that will enable their customers to move from a decision in principle to getting an instant offer.

Benefits of automating mortgage loan process

Whatever level of precision lenders choose for automating processes remains open to their own needs and requirements, but the benefits acquired remain consistent. Firstly, lenders want to ease processes and improve productivity by removing repetitive tasks involved in processing an application, as this can lead to increased time spent and prioritisation of less important tasks. Automating the mortgage loan process can help lenders recover lost time, allowing them to be more productive while closing more applications within a short time.

Another benefit of automatisation is overcoming issues caused by human error that usually take an extended time to fix. As per IRPA (Institute for Robotic Process Automation), out of every 100 steps in loan processing, humans are likely to make ten errors while carrying out even redundant work.

Improved fraud detection is also on the list of benefits, as lenders can leverage systems that use advanced predictive analytics to determine the risk associated with offering a particular loan to the buyer.

Other benefits include better customer experience, diminished disruption to IT processes, more defined workflows, and rapid auditing, among others.