MISMO, the real estate finance industry’s standards organization, announced the release of updated guidance for its “Mortgage Insurance Implementation Guide” on July 2. The guide was designed to provide a standardized framework for the data requirements necessary for lenders and mortgage insurers to exchange information electronically.
The announcement coincided closely with the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) release of historical credit score data held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to help facilitate industry adoption of VantageScore 4.0 and FICO 10T.
The types of information lenders often transmit to insurers, as noted in the guide, include mortgage insurance (MI) rate quotes, MI commitments, contract underwriting, document delivery and querying for MI order responses.
The latest updates incorporate the data requirements necessary to support VantageScore 4.0 and FICO 10T. The goal of these updates the industry to more readily align with evolving credit evaluation practices, according to a MISMO press release.
The enhancements are intended to help streamline how information is exchanged across systems, supporting greater consistency in data delivery and helping organizations modernize their mortgage insurance processes.
“Standardizing how lenders and mortgage insurers exchange information is critical to improving efficiency across the mortgage ecosystem,” MISMO President Brian Vieaux, said in the release. “The updated Mortgage Insurance Implementation Guide is essential to enabling the use of modern credit scoring models such as VantageScore 4.0 and FICO 10T. It also helps lenders benefit from improved system integration and more efficient loan qualification, while giving mortgage insurers access to more complete and consistent data.”
The Mortgage Insurance Implementation Guide was developed by MISMO’s “Mortgage Insurance Community of Practice” in response to industry demand for more consistent and standardized mortgage insurance data exchange practices.