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TransUnion has taken a $24 million minority interest in income and employment verification service Truework in a strategic partnership that’s aimed at helping mortgage lenders speed up closings by verifying important underwriting criteria when pulling credit reports.
Truework, which claims to provide coverage for 90 percent of U.S. employees, says 20 of the nation’s 25 biggest mortgage lenders rely on its income and employment verification services, including Fairway Independent Mortgage, Caliber, Guaranteed Rate, Citizens Bank, and LoanDepot.
An agreement announced Wednesday between Truework and TransUnion — one of the three major credit reporting agencies used by mortgage lenders — sets the stage for TransUnion to go head-to-head with Equifax’s verification service, The Work Number. The commercial agreement follows a “strategic minority investment” TransUnion made in Truework earlier this year, the companies said.
Hilary Chidi
“We expect that our collaboration will allow customers to derive superior insights and make more informed decisions by providing a broader view of consumers,” said TransUnion executive Hilary Chidi, in a statement. “In turn, we expect that consumers will benefit from a clearer picture of themselves when they apply for loans, employment and other opportunities.”
San Francisco-based Truework, which last summer raised $50 million in a Series C funding round led by G Squared, is an authorized provider of income and employment verification reports for Fannie Mae’s Desktop Underwriter validation service and also offers integration with ICE Mortgage Technology’s Encompass loan origination platform.
Ryan Sandler
“By making this partnership, TransUnion is really giving Equifax meaningful competition in a space where they have had no meaningful competitor,” Truework CEO and co-founder Ryan Sandler told Inman. “We’ve already started rolling it out and are seeing a lot of great success.”
To begin with, clients “will get the credit report from TransUnion and hit the Truework API [application programming interface] to get the income” separately, Sandler said. “But our ultimate goal is you will have the option to get the income in your credit report. It will be the ultimate product.”
Sandler said TransUnion is “active in a lot of verticals, from mortgage to property management to auto lending — a lot of customers that we have not yet touched. We have a lot of mortgage customers, and we’ve continued to do really well there, but we’re really excited to see the distribution that this can bring, and ultimately help more consumers get approved faster.”
From the consumer standpoint, Sandler said Truework provides not only convenience but transparency and control of their data.
Truework and payroll providers Rippling and Gusto have formed a Payroll Network that notifies employees when third parties ask to see their employment and income information, and allows them to restrict data to specific parties or turn access off altogether.
Streamlining mortgage underwriting could help more homebuyers take advantage of technology that can automate property valuations, allowing lenders to approve more loans without appraisals — a development that has some lenders offering same-day mortgages.
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