Natick-based Middlesex Savings Bank is among the local financial institutions that work with the Framingham-based company The Credit Network.
Over the past 76 years, one Framingham-based credit company has served the needs of credit grantors and mortgage lenders through a depression, a recession, a struggling housing market and a refinancing boom, and has consistently changed with the marketplace.
With its new Spanish-language credit reports available to Spanish-speaking consumers, The Credit Network, in collaboration with the National Hispanic Mortgage Bankers & Brokers Association, is advancing with the changing marketplace and adapting to a greater population.Framingham Credit Company
The Credit Network, one of the largest independent mortgage credit reporting service providers in the country, announced the formation of an alliance with NHMBB to make TCN’s Spanish-language credit reports more readily available to Spanish-speaking consumers.
And according to Richard Downing Jr., president of TCN, catering to the minority marketplace is essential in the mortgage lending business.
“We cater to and have built an infrastructure for the mortgage industry,” said Downing. “We help our customers differentiate themselves in the minority marketplace, which is traditionally underserved, by developing the Spanish-translation service. We started making the Spanish translation available on the Web portal. For our customers, it’s a no-brainer.”
TCN’s Spanish-language credit reports eliminate translation errors and provide an “increased comfort level to Spanish speakers while applying for a loan” he said.
Downing noted that Spanish-language credit reports are not used by most credit reporting providers, and TCN is looking at the “possibility of adding more languages” to the credit service, in order to cater to a larger group of mortgage lenders.
TCN is the first company to bring automated mortgage credit processing to the market in 1981. In the 1980s, TCN sold its credit reporting business to concentrate on mortgage credit reporting.
“Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were demanding full credit reports” for clients requesting home mortgage and loan originations, and according to Downing, the national loan associations “wanted to get the most comprehensive and complete credit information they could – a full factual credit report.”
TCN began assembling information for mortgage lenders to create a “full and accurate” credit report for their consumers, he added.
“Over the years, we wrote interface programs that allowed us to crunch distance and time. Instead of expanding geographically, we built relationships with vendors and rode around the country on interfaced links,” said Downing.
Saving a Step
Diane Bukis, assistant vice president of residential lending at Natick-based Middlesex Savings Bank, said the bank’s loan processors work with TCN by ordering a client’s credit report from the Internet, but TCN’s ability to adjust with the marketplace is what essentially helps the bank.
“One of TCN’s additional features was the ability to pull the Office of Foreign Affairs consumer check – we are required to do a check on borrowers to make sure they don’t have ties to terrorist associations,” said Bukis. “We used to have to go through OFA and now TCN provides us with the information.”
Bukis also said that TCN would be offering Middlesex a direct interface link so that loan processors can download the credit reports from the Internet directly into the residential loan application on the loan origination system.
“As opposed to pulling the credit report via the Internet and manually entering the information into the residential loan application … this will save a big step on our end,” said Bukis.
But as many mortgage lenders in the industry know, not all credit reports are clean and neat.
As TCN grew, the company created a division in Vermont solely responsible for the investigation of credit reporting flaws, falsehoods or client concerns.
“We have an investigative credit reporting service that will investigate the loans that have been kicked out of the system due to bad credit rating,” said Downing. “We have people that do nothing but address conflicts, disputes or disagreements within credit reports. When you have messy credit – typically seen with immigrants or monitories – credit isn’t all clean and neatly packaged.”
Downing said TCN tries to fix any credit reporting score on a consumer’s credit report in the interest of the mortgage lender.
“The interest is to get the loan closed and get them into their home – which can be done with a bad credit report – and then let [the customer] go back and argue the logistics of what is wrong on the report,” said Downing.
But as is apparent in the banking and lending industry in Massachusetts, a bad credit report is not the only bump in the road – new and amended legislation can create the need for additional work and maintenance for a mortgage lender.
Predatory lending has been a national security issue for years and as TCN provides information on consumers’ credit history and personal data, the company must also protect those consumers from predatory lenders.
In an effort to combat predatory lending, the Federal Trade Commission now requires lenders to keep records of every credit report ordered for every loan considered. However, geographically dispersed lenders rarely have a single repository for collection and storage of reports ordered, making the storage and retrieval of those records “a costly, tedious and time-consuming task,” said Downing.
Downing said the process of watching and complying with legislation, including the new predatory lending laws, is something TCN’s Grassroots Department handles.
“The consumer data information association, our trade representation in Washington, D.C., has on-staff federal and state [employees] who are watching for bills getting filed in the various states and in Congress,” said Downing. “One of the big issues is the amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, due to sunset in 2003.”
Downing said having mortgage lenders in various states around the country can be difficult, and it’s imperative that members of Congress and state legislatures know that consistency in the mortgage industry is beneficial for all consumers.
“We have tried to educate our legislatures and the people in Washington … because there is an inconsistency in the rules and regulations. It would be very difficult for the mortgage lending system to work if there were a different set of rules for every state,” said Downing. “We contact our state legislatures if the legislation isn’t going to help a lot of people. It’s when people don’t pay attention that these things don’t get passed.”
Melanie Nayer may be reached at mnayer@thewarrengroup.com.
