Most mortgage executives routinely review their team’s production metrics, such as pull-through rates, lock volume, fallout percentage, and cost per loan. Since these numbers directly affect revenue, they’re naturally a priority.
However, vendor performance doesn’t typically receive the same level of scrutiny. That’s because key performance metrics, from supplement turnaround to customer support answer times, are less visible. Even so, these operational inefficiencies carry real costs.
Below, we outline seven metrics every mortgage executive should review each quarter to evaluate whether their credit provider is helping or hindering their organization’s performance.
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Key Takeaways
- Quarterly vendor audits can help your mortgage lending business uncover operational inefficiencies that you may otherwise overlook.
- Evaluating your vendors’ service metrics, such as their supplement turnaround, verification performance, support responsiveness, and system uptime, can help you enhance efficiency across your mortgage lending pipeline.
- At Certified Credit, we help mortgage lenders continuously improve their operations through transparent service metrics, responsive support, and dependable technology.
Audit Metric #1: Credit Supplement Turnaround
Credit supplements are one of the easiest and most important service metrics to measure. Start your quarterly review by evaluating how many credit supplements your organization ordered during the previous quarter. Next, categorize them by their completion time, whether that’s:
- Same day
- One business day
- Two business days
- More than two business days
If your credit supplements frequently require several business days, your underwriting process may be experiencing unnecessary delays. A high-performing credit provider should complete the majority of credit supplements the same day and most remaining requests within two business days.
It’s also important to evaluate how frequently your organization requests credit supplements. An unusually high volume of credit supplements may indicate inefficiencies earlier in your mortgage lending process, such as:
- Borrower intake gaps
- Errors during initial pulls
- Incomplete documentation
An experienced credit provider can help you identify these trends and implement the appropriate workflow improvements.
Read More: How to Optimize Your Mortgage Lending Workflows For Better Business Results
Audit Metric #2: Order Volume and Redundancy
Turnaround time only tells part of the story. It’s also worth reviewing how many reports and supplements your organization ordered last quarter that were duplicates, re-pulls due to data entry errors, or requests for files that stalled before closing.
A rising number of unnecessary orders often points to a process issue rather than a vendor issue, such as loan officers re-ordering reports out of caution because status updates aren’t visible, or files getting pulled before intake is complete. Even so, a strong credit provider should be able to show you this data and help you spot the pattern, since they’re the ones absorbing the cost and the friction on the other end. At Certified Credit, our team can review your ordering history with you and identify where redundant pulls or avoidable re-orders may be adding unnecessary cost to your process.
Ask your provider whether they track re-pull rates and whether they’ve flagged any workflow trends on your account that might explain them.
Audit Metric #3: VOE Performance
Manual verifications of employment (VOEs) are another operational metric worth reviewing each quarter. Evaluate how long your provider takes to start processing these verification requests and their total turnaround time from request to completion.
Ideally, your provider should complete over half of manual VOEs within two business days. If you frequently face longer timelines, it may be worth discussing process improvements with your provider.
You should also review your organization’s automated verification hit rate. If a large percentage of files require manual verification, your current automation strategy may not be properly optimized for your borrower population. The right credit provider can help you optimize your VOE waterfall to increase your automated hit rate and accelerate your verification process.
Read More: Automating Your VOE Strategy
Audit Metric #4: Cost and Pricing Transparency
Pricing is one of the least reviewed line items in a vendor relationship, largely because it’s set once during onboarding and rarely revisited. During your quarterly review, check whether your cost per credit supplement, per VOE, and per report has changed, and whether any new fees have been introduced without a clear explanation.
It’s also worth asking your provider whether bundling or close loan pricing could reduce your costs, particularly if your order volume has grown or shifted. A transparent provider should be able to walk you through your pricing structure in plain terms and show you where your spend is going.
Audit Metric #5: Undisclosed Debt Monitoring (UDM) Effectiveness
Borrowers’ financial circumstances can change between their initial application and closing, making effective credit monitoring an important part of risk management. During your quarterly review, evaluate whether your UDM strategy is delivering timely, actionable information that supports underwriting decisions.
Here are some questions to ask your team during this process:
- Do you receive UDM alerts early enough to take meaningful action before closing?
- Can you quickly determine which alerts require immediate attention?
- Do you spend more time responding to alerts or sorting through unnecessary notifications?
- Is the UDM solution truly helping reduce last-minute underwriting surprises and closing delays?
A well-designed UDM solution should strengthen your risk management process while minimizing unnecessary administrative work. If your current monitoring strategy is creating confusion or slowing your team down, it may be time to reevaluate your approach.
Read More: 5 Questions to Ask Your Credit Provider About Undisclosed Debt Monitoring
Audit Metric #6: Vendor SLA Compliance
If your organization has service level agreements (SLAs) with its vendors, review them each quarter alongside their actual performance. These reviews aren’t about finding contract violations. Instead, they’re about ensuring your provider consistently delivers the level of service you expect.
A confident provider will proudly share the following metrics with you:
- Average call answer times
- Credit supplement turnaround
- Manual VOE completion rates
- System uptime
They’ll also explain any performance gaps and outline a plan to improve them.
Read More: What “Good Service” Actually Looks Like From a Credit Provider
Audit #7: Customer Support Accessibility
When your team contacts your credit provider, they’re typically trying to resolve a pressing issue affecting an active loan file. Every minute spent waiting for assistance can delay underwriting, slow closings, and reduce your team’s productivity. That’s why customer support responsiveness warrants regular review.Informal conversations with your lending staff often reveal more about your vendor relationship than formal reports. During these discussions, ask your loan processors, underwriters, and loan officers the following questions:
- How long do you typically wait to reach a representative?
- Are your questions or issues usually resolved during the first conversation?
- How often do you need to make multiple calls or escalate an issue before it’s resolved?
- Do you feel like the support team understands your business and existing workflows?
- When urgent issues arise, can you count on your provider to respond quickly?
Keep in mind that fast response times aren’t unrealistic. High-performing providers like Certified Credit routinely answer over 90% of customer service calls within 30 seconds. If your current provider isn’t meeting this benchmark, the bar may be set lower than it should be.
Read More: Signs You’ve Outgrown Your Current Credit Provider
Audit Metric #8: System Reliability
Even brief technology outages can reduce your productivity and delay critical mortgage lending activities. As a result, it’s important to review every system outage or service disruption your organization experienced during the previous quarter.
Take note of each incident’s:
- Duration
- Business impact
- Communication from your provider
- Resolution timeline
A provider’s overall uptime percentage also deserves attention. Reliable technology minimizes interruptions, keeps loan files moving, and reduces unnecessary troubleshooting for your staff.
Audit Metric #9: Integration Performance
Finally, evaluate how effectively your mortgage lending solutions integrate with your loan origination system (LOS). You can do so by considering these questions:
- How well does your credit provider’s system connect with your LOS and other tools?
- Does your team have to take any manual steps to overcome integration issues?
- Does data transfer across your various systems reliably?
Many lenders gradually accept integration inefficiencies as part of their daily workflows. However, what feels like a minor inconvenience today can become a significant operational burden over time.
By evaluating integration performance each quarter, you can identify these bottlenecks early and work with your vendors to improve them before they become ingrained in your operations.
Read More: The Lender’s Guide to Choosing a Mortgage Credit Reporting Partner
Turn Quarterly Reviews Into Continuous Improvement With Certified Credit
The goal of quarterly audits isn’t to build a case against your vendors—it’s simply to provide you with an honest picture of whether they’re performing at the level your business requires.
The right vendors won’t shy away from accountability. They’ll gladly share their performance metrics with you, explain anomalies, and implement a plan to address any issues. If that isn’t your current provider’s approach, it may be time to consider making a change.
At Certified Credit, we believe transparency is an essential part of exceptional service. That’s why we openly share measurable performance data and work closely with our mortgage lenders to continuously optimize their workflows.
When you partner with our team, you can expect:
- Ordering insight: We can review your order history alongside you to help identify redundant pulls, unnecessary re-orders, and opportunities to reduce cost without adding steps to your workflow.
- Responsive support: We answer over 90% of customer service calls within 30 seconds and maintain an average response time of approximately 20 seconds.
- Fast credit supplements: We complete 75% of credit supplements the same day and approximately 90% within two business days.
- Efficient manual VOEs: We complete over 50% of manual VOEs within two business days and facilitate swift automated verifications with our innovative tool, Cascade VOE.
- Dependable technology: We offer a comprehensive suite of integrated mortgage lending solutions with a documented 99.98% system uptime.
- Workflow optimization expertise: Our specialists can proactively evaluate your existing processes and help configure solutions that integrate seamlessly with your LOS.
Ready to evaluate your current workflows? Schedule a quarterly review with our team to see how your current provider’s performance compares.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why should mortgage executives audit their credit provider every quarter?
Quarterly reviews can help you identify operational inefficiencies that may not appear in traditional production reports, allowing you to understand and improve your vendor’s performance and overall workflow efficiency.
Which service metrics should mortgage lenders review?
Important audit metrics include credit supplement turnaround, manual VOE performance, customer support response times, UDM effectiveness, system uptime, integration performance, and compliance with SLAs.
Why are service level agreements important?
SLAs establish measurable expectations for vendor performance and provide a benchmark for evaluating whether your credit provider is delivering the agreed-upon level of service.
How can the right credit provider improve your operational efficiency?
A high-performing credit provider like Certified Credit can help streamline your workflows through responsive customer support, dependable technology, efficient turnaround times, seamless LOS integrations, and a broad suite of integrated mortgage lending solutions.
When should a mortgage lender consider changing credit providers?
If your quarterly reviews consistently reveal slow service, recurring workflow bottlenecks, unreliable technology, or poor vendor responsiveness, it may be time to look for a credit provider that can better support your organization’s operational goals.
How can mortgage lenders reduce unnecessary credit report and supplement costs?
Lenders can start by reviewing their order history each quarter to identify duplicate pulls, avoidable re-orders, and requests tied to files that stalled before closing. A credit provider with clear reporting can help surface these patterns and point to where process changes, such as improving intake accuracy or file status visibility, might reduce redundant orders.
What causes redundant or duplicate credit report orders?
Redundant orders often stem from process gaps rather than vendor issues, such as loan officers re-ordering reports because they lack visibility into a file’s status, or reports being pulled before borrower intake is complete. Reviewing order volume alongside your provider can help pinpoint the underlying cause.
How often should mortgage lenders review their credit provider’s pricing?
Pricing is worth reviewing at least once a quarter, since costs and fees can shift gradually without a clear explanation. Lenders should also ask whether their order volume qualifies them for adjusted pricing or bundling that could reduce overall spend.
Does Certified Credit help lenders identify cost savings?
Yes. Certified Credit’s team can review a lender’s order history to flag redundant pulls and unnecessary re-orders, and walk through pricing structure to identify where spend can be reduced without adding steps to existing workflows.
