How to Choose a Contract Loan Processor
Outsourcing processing is a real operational decision, and the differences between vendors show up on file three, not on the sales call. Here is what a brokerage should check before signing anything — written to be useful whether or not you end up working with us.
1. Confirm the licence, state by state
Contract processing is regulated at the state level, and a processor licensed in one state is not automatically able to work your files in another. Ask for the company NMLS ID and check it yourself on NMLS Consumer Access. If the states you originate in are not on the record, the rest of the conversation does not matter.
2. Understand how you are billed
There are three common models: a monthly retainer, a per-file fee billed at submission, and a per-file fee billed only on funding. The third puts the vendor's revenue on the same side as yours — they get paid when your loan closes. Ask what happens to the fee on a file that falls apart at underwriting, and get the answer in writing. Ours is on the pricing page.
3. Ask who actually touches the file
"We have a team" is not an answer. Ask whether a named processor owns your file, who covers them when they are out, what their background is, and how escalation works when a lender goes quiet. A processor who has worked in underwriting reads a condition list differently from one who has not.
4. Check they work inside your LOS
If the processor cannot work natively in your loan origination system, someone on your team becomes a human data bridge and the savings evaporate. Confirm the specific platform, not the category. We work in Arive, Encompass (ICE), LendingPad and Sonar — see integrations.
5. Pin down how borrower data is handled
You are handing over PII: pay stubs, tax returns, bank statements, Social Security numbers. Ask how documents move between the two teams, who inside the vendor can open a file, what happens to access when someone leaves, and how long data is retained after a loan closes. We don't take borrower documents through this website.
6. Agree on communication before the first file
Decide up front how often your LO hears about a file, through what channel, and who calls the borrower for follow-up documents. Most contract-processing relationships that fail do not fail on competence — they fail because nobody knew who was chasing the appraisal.
7. Start with a small batch, not the whole pipeline
Hand over a handful of files and run them alongside your in-house process. You will learn more from five real files than from any sales call, and you keep the option to walk away cheaply.
A checklist you can take anywhere
We turned the seven points above into a one-page vetting checklist you can run against any processing vendor, including us. It is free.