Income Automation | Auto-Clear Income Conditions Using OCR'd Data from Paystubs and W2s

Project Summary:

Automated Underwriting of Income Documents for Wage Earners (November 2023)

Objective and Scope:

The primary goal of this project was to automate the underwriting of income documents for wage earners, eliminating the need for underwriters to manually review the documentation.

Technologies and Tools Used:

Data was extracted from W-2 forms and paystubs using OCR technology and a deep learning model to classify documents and define data. This data was then processed through a rule engine, where a series of rules were executed to ensure data accuracy, policy compliance, and absence of red flags.

 Key Achievements:

• Successfully automated the income verification process for wage earners.
• Once documents met policy, income calculations were performed for qualification.
• Automatically populated the loan application with the calculated income amount.
• Reran the AUS, auto-cleared conditions, and added underwriting comments.
• Achieved a time savings of over 30 minutes per loan, resulting in significant FTE savings over the course of a year. 

Challenges and Solutions:

The project faced challenges due to the complexity of mortgage underwriting policies and the highly regulated, risk-averse nature of the industry. To navigate these challenges, we implemented strict controls, monitoring, and auditing of the automated responses. This allowed us to use a feedback loop to make necessary corrections and ensure accuracy.

Team and Collaboration:

As the project lead, I set the vision and created the roadmap for how this project would be delivered. I managed a product delivery team responsible for developing the automation, conducting analysis, developing requirements, working with ideation leads, testing, and implementing the project. The team’s focus was on ensuring that the business objectives were met effectively.

Future Improvements:

We are currently engaged in continuous improvement efforts, fine-tuning the rules and exploring policy changes to expand our capabilities and success rate.