First American Financial (FAF), a provider of title insurance, settlement services and risk solutions for real estate transactions, announced the integration of its DataTree property research solution with its FraudGuard loan-level fraud detection and data integrity tool – a solution that First American says will help lenders fight fraud.
Earlier this year, First American introduced DataTree, which the company said is “built to be the fastest, most comprehensive and easiest to use property research solution on the market.”
According to a release from First American, DataTree is built on the industry’s “largest database of property and homeowner information and document images.” The company said that DataTree’s database will contain 99% of U.S. housing stock and include more than 5.5 billion recorded document images.
Now, First American is integrating DataTree with FraudGuard.
“Available to lenders through First American’s Mortgage Solutions group, the integration empowers FraudGuard users with a sophisticated new tool to investigate potential fraud and loan quality issues,” the company said in a release.
“Lenders relying on FraudGuard alerts to identify potential collateral, ownership and borrower issues will particularly benefit from the DataTree integration,” First American continued. “With this highly targeted and streamlined approach to research, issues such as undisclosed properties and liens, signature fraud and real estate owned assets can now be addressed more efficiently and with more certainty.”
According to First American, the integration is being launched in conjunction with the new FraudGuard Property Overview, a next-generation collateral risk analysis component that further promotes superior loan quality.
"The integration of two powerful First American solutions in FraudGuard and DataTree is the one-two punch lenders require for exhaustive collateral valuation assessment and property research," said Kevin Wall, president of First American Mortgage Solutions. "The additional enhancement of the FraudGuard Property Overview component will enable end-to-end fraud detection, thereby contributing to a more robust and efficient mortgage origination workflow."
According to First American, the new FraudGuard Property Overview is backed by First American’s extensive public and proprietary data sources and includes: its Automated Valuation Module, full subject property overview, complete transaction history, relevant sales comparisons, local distressed property analysis, competitive market area analysis, and interactive graphs and maps.
"Providing lenders with a tool to help achieve total loan quality underscores our commitment to the pursuit of certainty in lending," said Jeff Moyer, chief product and strategy officer for First American Mortgage Solutions. "Particularly in a purchase-dominant market, performing collateral risk assessment with speed, accuracy and consistency is critical to mortgage financing."
