October Market Pulse Q&A: Unpacking Alternative Data and the Future of Mortgage Leads

Highlights: 

• Equifax is expanding the use of alternative data, such as telco/utility and rent payment data, to offer a more complete view of creditworthiness for qualified borrowers and focusing on permissible account review notifications for existing customers.

Both before and during each Market Pulse webinar, our audience submits their burning questions to our expert panelists. 

For our October Market Pulse webinar, our panel included Dr. Amy Crews Cutts, President and Chief Economist of AC Cutts & Associates, Tom O’Neill, Senior Advisor at Equifax, along with Joel Rickman, General Manager and SVP, U.S. Mortgage and Verification Services and Anthony Hutchinson, EVP and Head of Public Affairs at VantageScore. Below are their answers on questions around alternative data and lead-related products.

Q: How are you getting information on utilities, cell phones, or streaming services and rental payments on someone's report?

Joel Rickman, Equifax: We actually started this program around six or seven years ago in mortgage. And, we have a partnership where we are the stewards of a database that is telco[mmunications] data and utility data and, and they have been kind enough to partner with us in making that data available. So, it comes directly from the organizations that are getting the data along those lines, and what we are able to do is provide attributes alongside the Equifax credit report that show that people are paying their bills and how many bills they might have. This unique third party data is not included in Equifax’s traditional credit reports.  So that is often a positive build-up to show that qualified borrowers come in not only the flavor of traditional financial trade lines, but also those that have paid their utility bills and telco bills over and over. And, of course, here are a lot of people working together now to get more and more rent data readily available. We do have rent data and we're always looking to increase that. and with some of the recent announcements, we see that being a door that's going to open even wider for everyone to help the consumer have more data available with that credit report.

Q: What is the plan to replace trigger leads for mortgage lenders and brokers?

Rickman: Tigger leads are an interesting topic. I can only speak for Equifax here. I think all three bureaus are different, and it really has nothing to do with the score. But the trigger leads is something we've not really been heavily into, but our stance will be that we do have clients that come to us and ask for notifications if somebody's applying for a loan. For a lot of those clients, they’re asking about their existing customer base and those are for account review, rather than prescreen leads. Those are still permissible in the market, and we will provide those to our customers according to the applicable laws and regulations.