Roostify, Indecomm team up to streamline income verification

Mortgage point-of-sale fintech Roostify has added income-calculation technology from automation specialist Indecomm to its platform, in an effort to streamline origination and underwriting for non-QM lending. 

The partnership integrates Indecomm's IncomeGenius, an automated income calculation tool, with Roostify’s framework and is meant to ease asset verification for self-employed borrowers. Upon upload of bank statements and other income documents, Indecomm analyzes the data with its machine-learning algorithms and generates a worksheet adhering to guidelines specified by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which it then sends back to Roostify’s platform.

“With the integration of IncomeGenius, we can now simplify and automate calculations for self-employed borrowers, an increasingly important use case as the gig economy expands," said Roostify CEO Rajesh Bhat in a press release.

The agreement is the latest indication of the importance the mortgage industry is placing on a more efficient asset-verification process, which includes self-employed and gig economy workers. The partnership between Roostify and Indecomm follows the industry’s introduction of income-verification tools and similar partnerships late last year. Earlier this year, San Francisco-based Roostify also announced a deal with ICE Mortgage Technology to integrate some technologies to expedite eClosings.

Indecomm claims IncomeGenius ensures total compliance with requirements and provides a complete audit trail, serving as a single source for documentary evidence.

"In middle-office mortgage operations, associates spend a painstaking amount of time verifying, validating and comparing data and docs," said Rajan Nair, CEO of Edison, New Jersey-based Indecomm. "When this happens, you know that your associates are moving away from the purpose of serving the borrower.”

While many mortgage lenders expected to shift more focus to non-QM lending, including products for the self-employed, this year, the unexpectedly rapid surge in interest rates in the spring has presented unanticipated headwinds, leading to a potential re-evaluation of 2022 numbers. Earlier this month, Standard and Poor’s warned of increased extension risk in non-QM securitizations due to reduced refinance incentive.

Rates for non-QM mortgages run higher than benchmark averages for conventional loans, which themselves are at heights not seen since 2008. But it has not stopped the likes of United Wholesale Mortgage from introducing new non-QM offerings or one of the sector’s larger players, Angel Oak Home Loans, from opening consumer branches, as it announced this week.