Staircase launches Credit Waterfall for mortgage lenders

By Edlyn Cardoza

Staircase, the company building an integrated, digital infrastructure to accelerate tech-enabled mortgages, has launched Credit Waterfall, a new application program interface (API) that empowers lenders to streamline originations by providing access to all credit providers serving the mortgage market.

Credit Waterfall enables lenders to easily switch between credit providers to get the best pricing every time and to securely share a borrower’s credit data throughout their other systems. The new API also lets lenders toggle between soft and hard credit pulls to better control expenses while protecting their leads from trigger credit pull alerts at other lenders.

Currently, most lenders order a borrower’s credit through hard-wired connections between a single credit provider and their point-of-sale (POS) system or loan origination system (LOS). This strategy fails to provide lenders with the best credit option for a particular scenario. It prevents them from sharing borrowers’ credit data with their other systems, which drives up costs.

“Pulling a borrower’s credit to determine their eligibility for a loan is an essential part of the mortgage process, but also one of the largest sources of lender costs,” said Soofi Safavi, Staircase’s cofounder and CTO. “With Credit Waterfall, lenders now have the full breadth of choices when it comes to pulling a borrower’s credit, with the best possible option chosen every single time, automatically. There’s nothing else on the market like it.”

Credit Waterfall is available through Staircase’s low-code credit API, which allows lenders to switch from their current credit provider in just minutes. With Credit Waterfall, lenders only charge $1 to access any given credit provider. For $2, they can create a credit “waterfall,” which uses dynamic business logic to choose the best solution from multiple credit providers. In less than a month, Credit Waterfall develops a logical sequence to provide lenders with the optimal credit workflow for their organisation’s needs. Lenders pay nothing if Credit Waterfall does not return any results.

“Most lenders are struggling to reduce expenses, especially given today’s tight housing market,” said Staircase’s CEO and cofounder Adam Kalamchi. “Yet, they are typically hamstrung by poor technology integrations and lack of credit options when qualifying borrowers. By performing a soft pull on a borrower’s credit, Credit Waterfall enables lenders to check a borrower’s credit earlier in the application process without tipping off competitors that their customer is in the market for financing.”

“Our customers on average reduce their credit expense by 33% right away and realise further savings with just a few weeks of fine tuning,” Kalamchi said.

Beyond Credit Waterfall, Staircase’s unique waterfall technology has numerous applications, enabling lenders and servicers to create automated, integrated loan processing workflows using the optimum service partner or partners. If a partner does provide adequate results, Staircase automatically goes to other partners in waterfall fashion until the process is complete.