Overview

AFS Consumer Loan Origination streamlines, tracks, and controls the entire consumer loan origination process. Applicable to the entire range of consumer lending — direct, indirect, private label, unsecured, secured, and secured by real estate (e.g., home equity loan) — AFS Consumer Loan Origination is the fully integrated front-end of the AFS straight-through processing business model. The system creates dramatic efficiencies through built-in workflow management logic and systems connectivity capabilities:

		Application (for multiple channels, automates data population, fraud checks, pricing integrity, pre-approval qualifications, assignment of workflow/accountabilities, dealer communications)
		Decisioning (automates credit bureau report retrieval, risk analysis, credit scoring, fraud detection, presentation of underwriting analysis information, ability to append terms and conditions, credit insurance calculations, lending limit controls, policy exception identification, and approval/decline /review status)
		Closing (automates document preparation, documentation review, indirect loan discounting and funding, requirements completion)
		Booking (automates loan and collateral booking, pricing transfer, document review, exception tracking)

Implementation execution is key to maximizing the value the system offers. To that end, AFS Consumer Loan Origination implementation encompasses system customization using business rules developed from a bank's own policies, product definitions, user roles, and operating procedures, as well as the application of AFS' industry "best practices" expertise.

Rules-based, systematic management of loan origination and its associated processes reduces credit and operational risk by reinforcing credit policy, providing an audit trail for decisioning, identifying operating exceptions, and ensuring completion of documentation requirements. Automation of this process provides consistency in the organization's response to credit requests and reduces staff time to process loan applications. Customer response is faster, and service staff has the ability to track the status of any loan application on-line to respond to customer inquiries.

AFS Loan Origination provides value by enabling a bank to manage risk, cut costs, and generate revenue:

		Manage Risk: AFS Loan Origination origination and workflow modules provide accountability by building bank policy into daily processes that are systematically monitored. Exceptions are identified and reported so that immediate attention can be focused on corrective actions, preventing losses. AFS Loan Origination mitigates: —   Credit risk, by identifying credit policy exceptions and improving compliance, including consistency in decisioning treatment of loan applications, and the identification of unauthorized credit approvals or overrides —   Operational risk, by monitoring loans from first point of origin to booking-identifying process anomalies, including pricing and collateral exceptions, fee waivers, and missing or incomplete documentation. Status of individual loans is known at any time, at any point in the process from application to servicing. —   Regulatory Exposure, by providing data required for HMDA, CRA, HUD, GFE, and related disclosure compliance on real estate secured consumer loans.
		Cut Costs: By automating many of the processes that have historically been manual (decisioning, review, document production, customer notification, repetitive data entry) and by tracking individual performance, AFS Loan Origination reduces costs by up to 40%. —   Centralized or decentralized lending underwriting environments are supported on a single platform. —   Workflow management provides efficient routing of work to bank staff authorized to perform specific tasks required. —   Reporting focused on productivity management enhances staff efficiency. —   Process redundancies and manual errors are reduced. —   Significantly less staff time is required for manually intensive error research and resolution.
		Generate Revenue: AFS Loan Origination assigns fees and reviews rates in accordance with bank policy for each lending product as a loan is booked. AFS Loan Origination clients can achieve increases of three to five basis points on their portfolios attributed to the management of pricing exceptions. Revenue accrues earlier in the process due to faster booking; and delinquencies are monitored to reduce losses. Faster and better service results in increased customer retention.

Among its many capabilities, AFS Consumer Loan Origination addresses three significant consumer lending processes—application, underwriting, and documentation/closing—as follows:

		Application: —   Enables applications to be entered by any authorized user. —   Leads users through a series of screens that collect pertinent information about the borrower, co-borrower and collateral. Required information must be entered before the application can be submitted. —   Prompts users to provide compliance information to the applicant, where applicable. —   Captures HMDA information as part of the application process. —   Interfaces with the AFS Level III Loan Accounting System to search for existing customer information. —   Checks for duplicate applications to help prevent fraud and eliminate redundant entry. —   Captures insurance information. —   Submits applicant information to credit bureau(s) to retrieve a score and report, supporting the underwriting process. —   Features an embedded interface to a loan calculator to calculate payment amounts that include principal, interest, and insurance. —   Enables application corrections without rekeying the entire document. —   Tracks application source for reporting and evaluation of marketing effectiveness.
		Underwriting: —   Routes applications to the appropriate underwriting party, based upon business rules defined for the bank. —   Enables underwriting to be performed centrally or in a distributed environment, based on user credit profile (e.g., branch personnel, branch managers, regional managers, etc.). —   Enables comparison of credit scoring data with bank-defined decision criteria to determine the applicant's categorization as: Auto-Approval, (bypasses the underwriter); Auto-Decline, (by-passes the underwriter); or Review-Additional Underwriting. —   Facilitates application decisions by enabling underwriters to:   Review a loan summary screen providing a snapshot of the required information for preliminary decision, including score and bureau report.   Use a prefilled worksheet that calculates debt-to-income ratio.   View supplemental customer information via additional screens.   Make recommendations, where appropriate, to those with higher lending authorities.   Grant conditional approval or suggest counteroffers (for lesser amounts or other conditions). —   Allows comments to be added to the application to indicate conditions for approval or reasons for decline. —   Categorizes approved requests that are waiting for such supplementary file information as title search, flood determination, and appraisal.   Generates notifications, once a decision has been rendered. These notifications (e.g., declination letters) can be delivered electronically, by fax, or in hard copy.   Establishes loan account numbers, post-approval, through the interface with the AFS Level III Loan Accounting System. This capability enables loan account numbers to be printed on all documents.
		Documentation and Closing: —   Automates the final steps in the consumer loan process by:   Completing the collection of data to produce the loan closing documents.   Coordinating loan closing and funding.   Booking the loan to the loan accounting system. —   Interfaces to your document preparation system to complete and print loan documentation. —   Enables documentation to be printed at the closing site, eliminating overnight packages, faxes, interoffice mail, etc. from a central documentation site. —   Creates a loan-closing checklist to ensure that all proper documents have been received. —   Allows loan proceeds to be disbursed and offset entries created for "ticketless" processing. —   Books to the loan accounting system, eliminating the need to fill out loan boarding/transmittal sheets.

Additional features of AFS Consumer Loan Origination include its ability to interface with other products in the consumer loan process:

		Credit Bureaus: Equifax, TransUnion, Experian.
		Doc prep systems: Adobe (Jetforms), LaserPro, HotDocs.
		The AFS Level III Loan Accounting System.
		Carleton Loan Calculator.

For a more complete look at AFS' method of processing consumer loans in their entirety, click here.