Press Releases

DALLAS, Feb. 22, 2011 – The Work Number®, a service of Equifax, announced today at MBA's National Mortgage Servicing Conference & Expo that its Point In Time^™ service is now in use by three of the top five lenders. Made available in September 2010, Point In Time is a retro income verification service that validates and documents a borrower's employment and income at the point of loan funding.

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"With the significant increase in repurchases and mortgage insurance rescissions, Point In Time is the preferred service to help lenders investigate requests – proven by its high adoption rate among the leading financial institutions," said Janet Ford, Senior Vice President of The Work Number. "With Point In Time, lenders save time and costs associated with responding to repurchase requests as well as potentially avoid costly buybacks."

When documentation is missing, investors and insurers are armed with a reason to push back loans to originators or rescind coverage – at an average cost of $80,000 per repurchased loan in default. Point In Time serves as an important tool for lenders by delivering timely and precise income data to confirm original verification information. Point In Time presents a cost-effective method to quickly re-verify a borrower's income without compromising data security.

Ford added, "In 2011, financial institutions will give priority to loan modifications, foreclosures and repurchases as indicated by strong initiatives announced since the start of the year. To respond to the growing repurchase problem, institutions like Bank of America are even establishing company units dedicated to servicing defaulted loans."

In a recent announcement issued by Bank of America, the bank's newly formed Legacy Asset Servicing unit will manage the bank's mortgage modification and foreclosure programs. As institutions make this a higher priority, services like Point In Time will become increasingly necessary to help lenders quickly and cost-effectively investigate their loans.

"Mortgage repurchases have significantly grown over the past several years," said Dann Adams, President of The Work Number. "According to reports, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac alone have made more than $13 billion in recent repurchase requests – so many that lenders are unable to respond in a timely manner. Soon, we will see the consequences of not responding; therefore, lenders need a solution like Point In Time to efficiently and quickly defend their loans and prove underwriting due diligence."

About The Work Number (http://www.talx.com/)

The Work Number, a service of Equifax, is the largest source for employer direct, and up-to-date, employment and income verifications. The service offers access to over 200 million records instantly and will manually complete remaining employment and income verification requests within days. Additionally, The Work Number offers IncomeChek, a 4506-T tax transcript fulfillment service, and DirectChek, an SSA identity assessment and authentication service. All of these tools provide more authentic, complete information to help in servicing, underwriting, fraud prevention, loan modifications and repurchase.

About Equifax (http://www.equifax.com/)

Equifax empowers businesses and consumers with information they can trust. A global leader in information solutions, we leverage one of the largest sources of consumer and commercial data, along with advanced analytics and proprietary technology, to create customized insights that enrich both the performance of businesses and the lives of consumers.

With a strong heritage of innovation and leadership, Equifax continuously delivers innovative solutions with the highest integrity and reliability.  Businesses – large and small – rely on us for consumer and business credit intelligence, portfolio management, fraud detection, decisioning technology, marketing tools, and much more.  We empower individual consumers to manage their personal credit information, protect their identity, and maximize their financial well being.

Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Equifax Inc. operates in the U.S. and 15 other countries throughout North America, Latin America and Europe. Equifax is a member of Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500® Index. Our common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol EFX.

SOURCE Equifax