Blend’s integration with The Work Number (TWN), an Equifax product, enables lenders to automatically complete income and employment verification in Blend.
- How TWN works in Blend
- Borrower experience with TWN
- Lender experience with TWN
- Trigger TWN as the Lender
- Manual Verification of Income (VOI) with TWN
- Re-verify employment
- Per-Employer re-verification
- Re-verification with Mortgage Ultimate
- View VOE and VOI documents
How TWN works in Blend
- Consumer consent is collected in the application.
- Upon application submission, TWN is automatically requested for any application with wage or military income.
- If a result is returned, Blend will not request W-2s or pay stubs from the borrower.
- Employment re-verification can be done manually through the lender side.
- Starting in May 2022, we are now able to support TWN’s manual VOI solution within the Blend platform.
Borrower experience with TWN
With TWN enabled, the borrower experience remains virtually unchanged. The only notable change is an update to the consent during the Review and Submit Application section. The consent includes an authorization to obtain reports on employment and income.
Lender experience with TWN
If configured, Loan Officers can trigger TWN upon loan export. Please contact your Blend representative to enable this in your environment.
Trigger TWN as the Lender
- Fill out the application.
- Collect Other consumer report consent in the Borrower information section.
- TWN will trigger when the loan exports to your LOS and the reference loan number is updated in Blend.
View TWN verification results
- Navigate to the Employment section.
- Click View Verification Results.
Salary Key and Alternate ID
Employers may require a salary key or alternate ID in order to retrieve employment information from TWN.
When a salary key is required, the borrower will receive an email notification to obtain the salary key from their employer and send it to their loan team.
In Blend, the Verification Results status will show the status Requires Salary Key.
Once the loan team receives the salary key from the borrower, it can be entered into the Salary Key field on the Verification Results page and the loan officer can proceed to verify employment.
Note
Credit Threshold and State-based licensing can be configured in Blend to reduce unnecessary costs associated with TWN runs. Please contact your Blend representative to enable this in your environment.
The following role permissions must be set to Always in order to run TWN on the lender side:
- Permission to run verification of income lender-side
- Permission to re-verify income
Per-Employer Salary Key and Alternate ID
For customers who have configured Equifax’s NuOFX integration for TWN in their environment, their loan team members will be able to enter the employer salary key or alternate ID per employer.
If the verification Status of the employer is set to “May Require Alternate ID,” loan team members should work with the borrower to get that additional detail.
- Click on the ellipsis (...) next to the employer result
- Click Enter Alternate ID.
- Enter the borrower's Alternate ID.
- Click Submit.
Manual Verification of Income (VOI) with TWN
The Equifax NuOFX integration will support the ordering of manual VOI through TWN from within the Blend platform.
Order manual VOI from the lender application
Lenders whose environments have been configured to allow triggering TWN post-submit, and who have loan updates enabled, can order manual VOI through the loan application UI. Navigate to the Employment section and click the “Verify Employment” button on the top right to trigger this flow.
- Click Verify Employment in the Employment section of the application.
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Select Manually verify with Equifax Verification Services.
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Check the box(es) in the Consumer Report Consent sections to indicate that the borrower(s) have given consent for the lender to receive this information.
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Click Verify.
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Select which employer(s) to manually verify.
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Select Yes, receive email updates or No, don't receive email updates.
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Click Order.
The Work Number Verification Results screen will display all employer(s) results with statuses listed as "Pending".
If the loan team chooses to receive email updates on the manual verification order, those will be sent to the email address that the loan team provided in the order form. Once the manual verification is complete, the Status on the verification results page will update accordingly and any resulting documentation (including the income verification report) will appear in the Docs tab.
Note: The “Verify Employment” button will not be visible unless your environment is configured with loan updates and the loan has been exported to the LOS. Loan team members will also need to have the “Permission to run verification of income lender-side” Role Permission assigned to their accounts in order to see this button. Please reach out to your Blend representative to inquire about enabling these.
Order manual VOI from the Verification Results page
Loan team members can order a manual VOI from the verification results page if TWN has already been run for this borrower.
- Navigate to the Employment section.
- Click View Verification Result.
- Click Add manual verifications.
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Select which employer(s) to manually verify.
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Select Yes, receive email updates, or No, don't receive email updates.
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Click Order.
Per-employment manual VOI actions
For manual VOI orders, loan teams will be able to initiate the following actions per order:
a. View Details
b. Cancel Manual VOI
c. Attach authorization form
d. Request corrections on manual VOI
a. View Details
Clicking this will make a pop-up appear with details about the manual VOI order, including the Equifax Reference Number (SRVRTID).
b. Cancel Manual VOI
This will trigger an API request to Equifax to cancel the manual VOI order.
c. Attach authorization form for manual VOI
A small volume of employers require a signed consent document for TWN manual verification. If required for a given employer, loan team members will be able to add the authorization form using this button.
c. Click Attach new authorization.
ii. Click Upload and upload the desired form.
iii. Click Send authorization form.
Note: All authorization forms will be saved in the Docs tab of the Lender application.
d. Request corrections on manual VOI
Loan team members may need to request corrections to an existing manual VOI document. This can only be done for completed manual VOI requests.
i. Click Request correction.
ii. Select the desired reason for requesting manual verification correction.
iii. Click Request correction.
Actions initiated by the lender in Blend will appear in the Activity Log. Status updates coming from Equifax will appear in the View Details modal in the verification results page. Loan team members will receive an email from Equifax with any order updates as well, if they have opted in to receive them at the time of the order.
Re-verify employment
- Navigate to Employment.
- Click View Verification Results.
- Click Re-verify, then Done.
When the re-verification is complete, Loan Officers will receive a notification email and the Reverification of Employment document will be uploaded to Blend.
Per-Employer re-verification
For customers who have upgraded to the NuOFX integration, re-verification can be completed on a per-employer basis.
- Click on the expandable menu of the desired employer and click Re-verify employer.
OR
Click Re-verify if there is only one employer.
Re-verification with Mortgage Ultimate
Customers who use Equifax’s Mortgage Ultimate can re-verify employment using this service in Blend.
a. If Mortgage Ultimate was used in the initial verification, loan team members will see a notification box at the top of the verification results page.
- Click Re-verify.
- Confirm whether to verify employment only, or income and employment.
- Click Verify with Mortgage Ultimate.
Note
- Customers must have Mortgage Ultimate configured in their environments
- Customers must upgrade to the NuOFX integration
- The employer must have already been previously verified using Mortgage Ultimate in order to re-verify using this service
- Mortgage Ultimate allows for up to four total verifications per borrower. Once the number of orders runs out, lenders will be able to reverify employment using The Work Number Reverify.
View VOE and VOI documents
VOE and VOI documents generated in Blend will be available in the DOCS tab. You can navigate directly to the VOE/VOI Docs via the View Docs link on the Verification Results page.
DISCLAIMER: The features on this page may not be applicable to your institution. Please reach out to Blend Support for more information on what features are enabled for your use.