Finicity, an open-banking solutions provider that was acquired by Mastercard in October, announced that it is dipping further into the mortgage space.
Finicity’s latest product, dubbed its “mortgage verification service,” will allow prospective borrowers to provide certain permissions that allow mortgage lenders to verify assets, income and employment on one platform. The company’s verification system was also accepted by both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, as the GSEs work towards a more digital mortgage experience.
Mortgage lenders are able to run Finicity verification reports through Fannie Mae’s Day 1 Certainty program and the Freddie Mac AIM program.
“We’ve had long-standing relationships with Fannie and Freddie,” Lisa Kimball, senior vice president of product and strategic programs at Finicity, told HousingWire. “And so as we started thinking about income and employment, we have partnered with them throughout. They really set the standard in the industry for verification.”
Digitization is the key to innovation in the mortgage space, said Rick Lang, single-family vice president of strategy and integration at Freddie Mac.
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“The digitization of the mortgage process, both on origination and servicing fronts, involves things like leveraging source data and predictive analytics to automate, eliminate and/or streamline processes,” Lang said in an interview with HousingWire. “Freddie Mac is collaborating with our sellers, servicers and industry technology solution providers, like Finicity and this very product offering, to make digitization a reality.”
According to Lang, the GSE has been striving to create a mortgage process that is “less burdensome” and more cost-effective for all parties involved.
Finicity is entering a competitive space with other tech companies like Blend and Plaid (which was acquired by well known competitor Visa) which have previously released their own versions of GSE approved verification services. But Finicity seems confident in going toe-to-toe.
“The mortgage market in particular is a place fraught with manual process; it’s an area that seemed absolutely ripe for technological innovation,” Kimball said.
That innovation is credited as one of the reasons Mastercard announced its pursuit of the company back in June, 2020 for a purchase price of $825 million.
With the addition of Finicity, Mastercard is making a bet on more than just open banking software.
“It’s through the use of next generation open banking APIs and clear consumer approvals that this financial information can deliver streamlined loan and mortgage processes, rapid account-based payment initiation and personal financial management solutions,” said Mastercard President Michael Miebach.