With a new year fast approaching, many mortgage lenders are reviewing their budgets, negotiating their contracts, and refining their workflows. During this process, it’s crucial to evaluate whether your current credit provider is acting as a true strategic partner.
A worthwhile credit partner should proactively support your success by helping you cut costs, optimize your workflows, and stay ahead of emerging industry changes. As you prepare for 2026, you can use these ten questions to evaluate whether your current provider is the right fit.
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#1 How often do you review my account for potential savings?
From FICO’s price hikes to the credit bureaus’ rising fees, credit reports are becoming more expensive every year. These price increases are having a significant impact on mortgage lenders’ profit margins.
A good credit provider should always be looking for ways to help you save. With this in mind, ask your current provider if they can:
- Proactively review your credit report ordering patterns.
- Analyze which branches or teams are driving unnecessary spend.
- Help you identify reasons for redundant credit pulls.
If your credit provider is operating on autopilot, you may be leaving savings on the table. To protect your profits, find a credit partner that can perform regular account audits instead.
Read More: How Can I Cut Credit Costs When They Keep Rising?
Cut Costs With Certified Credit’s Support
At Certified Credit, we’re dedicated to helping our lenders succeed, and protecting their profitability is an essential part of that equation. That’s why we proactively look for ways to streamline their workflows with cost-saving solutions.
Smart Select is just one example. This tool allows you to set custom parameters for how you order your soft pull and hard pull credit reports. You can choose from the following options:
- 1 bureau → 2 bureau → 3 bureau
- 1 bureau → 3 bureau
- 2 bureau → 3 bureau
Once you select your parameters, Smart Select will automatically compare your applicants’ data with your pre-set eligibility criteria. If an applicant satisfies your credit thresholds, it will upgrade their report accordingly. However, if an applicant doesn’t meet your thresholds, Smart Select will stop the process there, preventing unnecessary upgrades that inflate your credit spend.
#2 Can I bundle credit and verifications to save money?
Many lenders combine multiple vendors’ products and solutions as they curate their tech stack. However, patchworking solutions from different providers often lead to less predictable monthly costs and more complex billing processes.
Ask your current providers if they offer discounts for bundled solutions. Along with saving money, bundling solutions can also help you:
- Simplify your billing
- Streamline your vendor management
- Improve integration across your workflows
Certified Credit can often provide discounted pricing if you bundle multiple products from our extensive suite of solutions, which includes affordable credit reports, automated verifications of income and employment (VOE), fraud detection tools, undisclosed debt monitoring (UDM), and much more.
#3 What is your average service response time?
When you’re helping borrowers close on their dream homes, every minute counts. Operational delays can prevent a borrower from locking in a rate, set back underwriting, or even jeopardize a closing, hurting your borrower satisfaction and reputation.
With so much at stake, it’s crucial to work with vendors that address issues promptly. You can assess your current vendors’ responsiveness by asking:
- How quickly does your support team respond to tickets or phone calls?
- Is your customer support team available during extended hours?
- Is your support team located onshore or offshore?
- Will I be matched with a dedicated representative?
At Certified Credit, we pride ourselves on providing outstanding customer support, and we have the accolades to prove it. As the winner of the TMC 2024 Lender’s Choice Award for Best Customer Service, our customer support team:
- Is located 100% onshore
- Boasts an average of 10+ years of industry experience.
- Answers 95%+ of customer service calls within 30 seconds or less.
- Responds to 95% of customer emails within the hour.
- Ensures a System Availability of 99.95%.
Thanks to these proven performance metrics, you can feel confident that we’ll respond quickly and reliably whenever you need assistance.
Read More: Beyond Words: The True Meaning of Good Service
#4 How does your team support our loan officers and processors day-to-day?
While unexpected issues warrant fast responses, you also need to work with vendors that offer ongoing support for your daily operations. You can vet your current vendors by asking these questions:
- Do you offer workflow optimization support?
- Will you train my team on how to make the most of your products?
- Can you update me on upcoming regulations and market conditions?
The right credit partner should take an active role in ensuring your success by identifying areas for improvement, suggesting timely solutions, and educating you on upcoming changes that may impact your lending process or business strategy.
#5 How do you help us identify inefficiencies in our credit workflows?
Workflow inefficiencies are one of the biggest drivers of unnecessary credit spend. Thus, a worthwhile provider should help you pinpoint these inefficiencies by analyzing where you may be:
- Pulling credit too early
- Performing redundant credit pulls
- Ordering verifications before applicants reach key milestones
- Assigning credit-pull permissions too broadly
- Overlooking opportunities to use soft pulls in place of hard pulls
Certified Credit works with lenders across the country, giving us ample insight into the most common credit inefficiencies. After reviewing your workflows, we’ll identify ways to improve their efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Read More: Is Your Credit Provider Helping You Optimize Your Spend?
#6 Can you provide usage analytics or trend data?
You need detailed data and analytics to make data-driven improvements. Thus, ask your credit provider if they can provide information about your:
- Pull volume trends
- Re-pull rates
- Branch-level usage
- Loan officer-level activity
- Verification ordering patterns
- Soft vs. hard pull metrics
Many of Certified Credit’s solutions have built-in reporting dashboards, giving you instant visibility into your operational performance and product usage. Our team can also help you interpret these metrics, identify meaningful patterns, and leverage these insights to make more strategic decisions.
#7 Do you offer tools that reduce unnecessary re-pulls and loan fallout?
Redundant credit pulls and unexpected loan fallout are two major drivers of thin profit margins. By mitigating these issues, you can make a meaningful difference to your bottom line.
Ask your credit provider whether they offer tools designed to help you:
- Reduce fallout by identifying risk early on
- Prevent unnecessary hard pulls
- Initiate automated undisclosed debt monitoring
- Avoid late-stage surprises that may prompt repeat pulls
Certified Credit offers several solutions to help you reduce repeat credit pulls and minimize fallout. For example, Cascade UDM can continuously monitor your applicants’ credit activity from their initial pull through closing and alert you to any changes that could jeopardize their eligibility. Better yet, this tool can satisfy your LQI compliance, eliminating the need to order Refresh Reports.
Read More: Reducing Fraud and Repurchase Risk with Undisclosed Debt Monitoring
#8 How do you tailor your solutions to different loan products, branches, or business units?
No two lenders’ workflows, borrowers, or regions are exactly the same. To operate at your best, you need credit solutions that you can tailor to support the way you do business. Start by confirming whether your current credit provider allows you to customize your:
- User access controls
- Credit report ordering parameters and formatting
- Verification vendor selection
If your provider only offers one-size-fits-all solutions, it can chip away at your user experience and your operational efficiency. Fortunately, you can customize Certified Credit’s solutions to suit your workflows and budget.
For example, Cascade VOE lets you build a custom sequence of verification vendors from our expanding list of instant-hit and consumer-permission data (CPD) providers. By placing your lowest-cost options at the top, you can reduce your VOE expenses while dramatically accelerating your verification process.
Read More: How Automated VOE Changes Everything
#9 Do you help us prepare for upcoming industry changes?
The mortgage industry is constantly evolving. As regulations and market conditions shift, you must adapt fast to safeguard your compliance and competitiveness.
Keeping track of every update can be difficult when you’re focused on running your day-to-day operations. To ensure you’re receiving the right level of support, ask yourself whether your current credit provider has kept you informed about the following shifts taking place in 2026:
- The introduction of VantageScore 4.0
- The future rollout of FICO 10T
- New fair lending proposals
- Increasing scrutiny of AI
- Rising data security requirements
- Evolving trigger lead restrictions
If your provider hasn’t kept you informed on these critical developments, it may be time to make a change. At Certified Credit, we closely monitor regulatory shifts, attend industry conferences, and maintain relationships with key regulatory agencies. This enables us to brief our clients early on and offer practical guidance on what these changes mean for their workflows.
Read More: New Changes Coming to Credit Scoring Models & Credit Reporting
#10 Is your rescore department located onshore and available for calls?
When you’re dealing with complex credit files, having access to a second set of eyes can be a game-changer. For instance, a rescore specialist can help you evaluate your applicants’ credit reports and guide you toward the most efficient path forward.
But to be truly effective, rescore experts must be readily available to answer questions and offer real-time support. So ask yourself, “Is my credit provider’s rescore department easily accessible when I need help?”
If they’re located offshore, you may experience:
- Delayed responses
- Longer processing times
- Limited familiarity with complex U.S. credit scenarios
At Certified Credit, our rescore department is fully staffed by an experienced, onshore team. Thus, you can rest assured that they’ll review your rescore requests promptly, assess their likelihood of success, and provide actionable recommendations.
Strengthen Your 2026 Credit Strategy With Certified Credit
In summary, a new year gives you a chance to refine your lending strategy, tech stack, and vendor selection. By asking your credit provider the right questions now, you can determine whether they’re equipped to meet your needs in the year ahead.
If your current providers’ answers fall short, it may be time to make a switch. If so, we’re confident that Certified Credit can deliver the transparency, efficiency, and partnership you need to thrive in 2026.
Want to learn more about our advanced mortgage lending solutions? Schedule a credit consultation with Certified Credit today!
Sources:
HousingWire. The end of the mortgage workhorse: Adapting to a new lending ecosystem.
