Improving the mortgage process with verifiable credentials

Home Lending Pal uses Trinsic to make the mortgage application process faster and more secure for homebuyers and lenders.

About

Home Lending Pal is an AI-powered mortgage advisor that makes the home buying process easier than ever. With Home Lending Pal, homebuyers can:

  • Search for homes that fit their budget
  • Find out the likelihood of getting approved for a loan in a certain price range
  • Obtain a personalized list of the most affordable mortgage options available to them
  • Get guidance on how to increase the likelihood of getting approved for a loan
  • See hidden mortgage and closing costs
  • Receive a list of lenders who will lend to them based on their financial situation

Instead of having to navigate the various steps in getting approved for a mortgage alone, homebuyers use Home Lending Pal to streamline the process, giving them access to the same information that an underwriter will have when writing their loan—all in one place.

The problem

When applying for a mortgage, homebuyers must gather and submit a large amount of personal information. Relying parties such as loan officers, mortgage brokers, lenders, and underwriters require information on the homebuyer’s identity, credit history, employment, income, property, assets, debts, etc.. Homebuyers often have to go through the hassle of printing out, scanning, and/or emailing these documents multiple times (e.g., if a homebuyer wants to apply to three different lenders to see which one approves). The more times a homebuyer shares their personal information, the more likely it will be compromised.

Additionally, lenders are wasting significant time and resources verifying homebuyers’ information when trying to identify leads and when underwriting. On average, it costs about $1,200 for a lender to be able to identify a qualified lead. And even if lenders purchase a lead from a standard lead generator, they have a 3% success rate.

Home Lending Pal knew there had to be a better way that protected the homebuyer’s personal information and simplified the verification process for lenders and other relying parties.

“Part of the issue with the home-buying process is that I have to gather a bunch of pieces of paper and take them to someone to review them. You could consider those pieces of paper as credentials. You take them to the loan officer, the loan officer reviews them, and he says, ‘Ok, I got everything—we’ll submit your loan application.’ That file now goes to another person that goes over that same information, and everyone might be doubting the origin of that information.”
Maria Munaro
Distributed Ledger Architect, Home Lending Pal

The solution​

The Home Lending Pal team realized that decentralized identity enabled the future of the home-buying process that they were envisioning. Home Lending Pal chose Trinsic as its partner to implement decentralized identity to do the following:

  1. Digitize and streamline the mortgage application process (say goodbye to having to print out, scan, or email documents multiple times, and say hello to the sharing of digital, verifiable credentials)
  2. Enable the secure, and privacy-preserving sharing of information straight from the homebuyer to the lender (none of the homebuyer’s personal financial information is stored in Home Lending Pal’s database)
  3. “Pre-verify” the data that is sent to lenders and other relying parties so they do not have to waste time and resources verifying data that has already been verified when trying to identify qualified leads or underwriting (creating more opportunity for lenders to serve more clients)
 
”[Decentralized Identity] allows for the verification of information to take place prior to the interaction even happening. It changes the data workflow of a very archaic, very rudimentary framework that lenders have had to work with every day up until now.”
Steven Better
Co-Founder and COO, Home Lending Pal

The credit reporting credential

Through Home Lending Pal, every homebuyer is given a digital wallet. Within this wallet, homebuyers store their credentials that contain all the information needed when applying for a mortgage. From the wallet, homebuyers can easily and securely send these credentials to lenders, and lenders can instantly verify that information without having to communicate with the original issuing entity.

For example, one of Home Lending Pal’s data providing partners is Experian, a credit reporting agency. Home Lending Pal and Experian are piloting the process of providing a credit reporting credential that would be sent to homebuyers’ wallets. Then, homebuyers could send their credit reporting credential to lenders at a click of a button to prove their FICO® Score. Because Experian is a verified data provider in the Home Lending Pal network and would be providing that credential directly, lenders could trust that there’s no additional discovery that needs to occur and could continue on with the underwriting process.

Partnering with Trinsic

Home Lending Pal decided to partner with Trinsic because of Trinsic’s ease of use, commitment to standards, and its reputation in the decentralized identity space. Trinsic provides Home Lending Pal not only the resources they need to be successful but also the flexibility to build a solution that best serves their network participants.

“Partnering with Trinsic gives us that additional credibility that we are taking user information seriously.”
Cheron Bruce
CTO, Home Lending Pal

Get started with Home Lending Pal

Ready to start your home-buying journey? Sign up for a free Home Lending Pal account today! If you are lender interested in joining the Home Lending Pal network, fill out the form here.

Learn more

If you are interested in learning more about how Dentity can improve the way identity data is exchanged between you and your consumers, sign up for a free Dentity account or contact the team. The Dentity OpenID Connect (OIDC) app, which allows businesses to verify verifiable credentials held by Dentity users, is now available as an integration in the Auth0 Marketplace.

Additionally learn more about Dentity’s success straight from its Co-founder & CEO Jeffrey Schwartz on Trinsic’s podcast ‘The Future of Identity’.

“We feel like we were able to take all the tools provided from Trinsic and build our product. And not only was it super easy to build—because you make it super clear and easy—but we could also make it totally our own.”​
Matthew Schwartz
Co-founder & Director of Marketing, Dentity