TransUnion has finally made its push onto the D+H Expert platform and alongside rival Equifax, although brokers won’t be able to shoot off its credit reports to lenders until early next month.
TransUnion has finally made its push onto the D+H Expert platform and alongside rival Equifax, although brokers won’t be able to shoot off its credit reports to lenders until early next month.
“It’s activated now for the brokers to pull a credit report, but they won’t yet have the ability to send it to a lender via Expert until early July and after testing to ensure that lenders will be able to receive the reports,” Steve Malone, VP of broker services fop Davis + Henderson, told MortgageBrokerNews.ca.
With the release of D+H Expert 2.12 on April 30, brokers were for the first time given the choice to set up TransUnion accounts in Expert, effectively allowing them to pull credit bureau reports not only from Equifax, but also TransUnion. That, of course, is after first winning client approval.
For TransUnion, there’s also the challenge of winning both broker and lender buy-in for services offered at a lower price point and mirroring those of Equifax, now the industry’s standard bearer,
“I have used TransUnion since it came on Expert,” Linda Yuan, principle broker for Centum Legend Financial in Toronto. “But only as a back-up, or a second opinion, for when the client disputes something on the Equifax report or something is missing.”
The dominance of Equifax is also likely to challenge TransUnion as it aims to grow its share of broker channel transactions via Expert.
“They may find it hard because all lenders accept Equifax, which isn’t the case with TransUnion,” said Michelle Brienza, an agent with Lending Logic Financial in Toronto. “I also find that if a lender needs a second report that they are willing to pay for it, not the broker, which may be another challenge for TransUnion in trying to gain brokers on Expert.”
Lenders are, however, aware of TransUnion’s push onto the platform, said Nick Kyprianou, CEO at Equity Financial Trust. “Brokers haven’t approached us and neither has TransUnion and we’re inclined to stay with Equifax,” he told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “But we are willing to do a comparison of the two and consider TransUnion, although price won’t necessarily be a determining factor.”
