Company Rolls Out Scoring System for Third Party Brokers

Interthinx, Inc., a provider of risk management and compliance tools, said Tuesday that it had rolled out a new service to actively review and score third-party mortgage originators. Based on proprietary loan data and weighted “alerts” within the Interthinx scoring system, the company’s Broker Risk Score provides lenders with the ability to incorporate a “score” into their evaluations of potential and current business partners. The company said it maintains data on historical broker performance aggregated from the millions of loans within the Interthinx inventory. “Broker Risk Score calculates risk based on the number of loans identified for a broker origination company, the percentage of loan reviews identified as high risk transactions, and the weighted alerts within the reviews that are assigned a value,” said Stacey Louie, senior vice president of product development and engineering for Interthinx. “The combined values are used to determine whether the broker origination company represents a low, medium or high risk for the approving lender.” Third party brokers have been blamed by many as a driving force behind the current mortgage mess, with industry critics pointing to compensation schemes that incentivized brokers to commit fraud, led them to attempt to manipulate a borrower’s application to gain approval from a lender’s automated underwriting system, and had many pushing borrowers into loans they could not afford. “The FBI has stated that 80 percent of all reported fraud losses involve collaboration or collusion by industry insiders,” continued Mike Zwerner, senior vice president of business development and marketing for Interthinx. “There has never been a more crucial time in this contracted market to carefully review third party entities. The improved business profitability that results from the ability to evaluate potential third-party risk before accepting loans will add a newly restored confidence in approval processes. These are benefits that should not only be welcomed by lenders, but aggressively sought after.” Interthinx said that its broker scoring module is available for no additional charge within the company’s third party review product. For more information, visit http://www.interthinx.com.