November Meeting Best Practices Questions
- How are lenders managing the quality of broker and correspondent relationships via the approval process, continuous monitoring and/or pull thru thresholds? What actions are taken when the quality of the relationship declines?
- What are your broker approval requirements i.e., minimum volume, minimum FICO scores of owners, net worth requirements, audited financials?
- Have any lenders instituted a maximum percentage of acceptable TPO volume for correspondent lending clients?
- How are lenders managing fraud in the broker/correspondent channels? What tools are being used?
- How are lenders making account executives accountable for quality originations and customers?
- Have lenders instituted minimum FICO scores for FHA? If so what are they? Has the minimum increased recently?
- How are lenders handling increasing repurchase and indemnification costs? How are these costs being pushed down to the channel?
- Do your broker agreements have provisions for loan repurchases for fraud or early payment default?
- How are lenders reserving for repurchases given higher volumes and greater severity due to falling home prices?
- How are lenders handling repurchases requests due to false information on stated income/stated asset loans?
- When a correspondent has been asked to repurchase a loan and their response is they do not have the money to buy back the loan, and the loan cannot be refinanced for legitimate reasons, what other options or alternatives are being presented to the correspondent to resolve the situation other than termination of the relationship?
- Have lenders established centralized appraisal ordering in the wholesale channel, ie. Wholesaler ordering the appraisal instead of the broker? If so, are you requiring the appraisals to be from an approved national appraisal management company?
- Do you require the new broker fee disclosure form when the loan comes through your correspondent channel?
- In what instances, if any, do you require IRS form 4506T to verify income?
- Do you require the completed/validated 4506T to be in the file prior to funding?
- How do you verify the legitimacy of insured closing letters from settlement agents (i.e. that they are an authorized agent for the title company and that the letter has been authorized)? Without verification, we are at increased risk of settlement agent fraud.
- In the wholesale channel, are any lenders doing branch restructuring due the lack of production? How is the right number of branches being determined?
- In the wholesale channel, do any lenders have a matrix or units per back office FTE target? Are you weighting the number of loans differently for different loan types? How are you determining those weights?
- Which lenders are using up front imaging? How much is being done by the broker versus your internal staff? How are you incenting the broker to use this imaging for submitting documents?
