Get to Know Sarma

Even at over 100 years old, this question comes up every day. The former credit bureau for central and south Texas, Sarma now offers key products nationwide in multiple spaces. Learn more about all of our key product specialties:

• Consumer Credit Reports for everyone. Also get key personal credit tips and industry news (separate site)
• Mortgage Credit Reporting for mortgage banks and brokers
• TransUnion Credit Reports for the Texas market
• Tenant Screening for property managers
• Tenant Screening for Landlords
• Background Checks for employers
• Third party Collections for all business types
• Skip tracing products for all business types
• Business reports for business to business qualification

Offering stability and key information, you too can make more profitable business decisions in the marketplace.

National Mortgage Loan Delinquency Rate Drops Nearly 14% in 2012

TransUnion is reporting that the national mortgage delinquency rate (the rate of borrowers 60 or more days past due) declined for the fourth consecutive quarter, dropping from 5.41% in Q3 2012 to 5.19% in Q4 2012. On a year-over-year basis, the mortgage delinquency rate has declined nearly 14% from 6.01% in Q4 2011.

"The national mortgage delinquency rate experienced its largest yearly decline since the conclusion of the recession, though we still remain far above normal levels," said Tim Martin, group vice president of U.S. Housing in TransUnion's financial services business unit. "For the most part, newer vintage mortgage loans are not the reason for the stubbornly high delinquency rate. They are performing relatively well. The elevated delinquency levels that we still are experiencing are a result of older vintage loans -- borrowers who haven't been making their payments for a rather long time that are still in the system, inflating the overall rate."

During the height of the mortgage crisis, mortgage delinquencies rose 54% in 2007, 53% in 2008 and 50% in 2009. The subsequent decline has been a slow process with delinquency levels dropping 7% in 2010, 6% in 2011 and now falling 14% in 2012.

San Antonio Express News Promotes AP Article on Credit Reports

The local San Antonio Express News published an article this week through the Associated Press about a recent FTC study on credit report accuracy. According to the article, "one in four consumers found an error in a credit report issued by a major agency." The study, which reviewed 1,001 consumers (out of over 100 million that have credit files in the United States), covered all three major agencies, TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. The full Associated Press article can be found here. 60 Minutes also did a story referencing this report in the past week. It is clear that consumers need to review their credit reports from all three bureaus on a regular basis to ensure creditor reported information is accurate at all times.

The Consumer Data Industry Association (CDIA) is the credit industry's trade association and is intimately involved in creditor and credit agency relations. They have released the following statement in reference to this story.

"The promotion released yesterday for a '60 Minutes' story airing this coming Sunday, February 10, demonstrates that '60 Minutes' has selectively interpreted an upcoming Federal Trade Commission (FTC) study to ignore the most significant results," stated Consumer Data Industry Association (CDIA) president and CEO Stuart Pratt .  "The FTC study shows that 98% of credit reports are materially accurate, a fact it appears '60 Minutes' is set to ignore."

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New and Improved Support

At Sarma, we take pride in providing a higher level of human customer service and support than our competitors. Whether it is helping with reissuing to Fannie Mae or logging into one of our many services, we are her for you.

We offer multiple ways to contact us. Here are some reminders:

• Call our customer service team any weekday outside of most Federal holidays at 1-800-955-5238 x8 and get a live employee on the line. If you are a mortgage customer, choose option 2 to do the same.
• After hours support is available for technical issues
• Chat with us here through the website. Look to the left and click on the live agent button at any time. If we do not have live agents on line, it will let you send us a message!
• If we have a system outage, we will communicate through our Twitter account or an alert right here on the webiste. Always check here first. Our Twitter handle is @sarmainfo. Be sure to follow us and keep up to date.
• If there is an outage after hours, this will also be announced on our inbound technical support voicemail message.

Sarma Launches Key New Credit Product with FICO Scores

Get the Facts on PRBC

If you offer loans or credit, your business relies on the ability to gauge risk. However, about 100 million Americans (nearly a third of the US population!) are underserved by the current credit reporting system, and their risk level cannot be sufficiently measured by a traditional report. Many of these people are solid, faithful bill-payers, but you can't do business with them yet. PRBC MainStreet is changing that.

Many of these consumers earn a steady income and demonstrate their creditworthiness through regular on-time payment of rent, utilities, and other recurring monthly bills. When alternative data is considered in determining risk, the risk profiles of these consumers are very similar to mainstream consumers.

As a PRBC MainStreet business you can access this market of over 3 trillion dollars in spending power. Sarma's PRBC Consumer Report with FICO Expansion Score provides the data and the FICO Score to meet your business requirements to profitably serve the underserved consumer. The FICO Expansion Score utilizes the same score range, 300-850 and is a highly reliable score that aligns with the Classic FICO Score.

Report Credit Data Through Metro2!

Sarma Launches Appraisal Management Service

We are happy to announce Sarma Appraisal Management Services. Sarma has teamed with Accurate Appraisal Management (AAM), a nationwide appraisal management company (AMC) that provides valuation services by certified and licensed real estate appraisers.

With state of the art technology, experienced staff and a nationwide panel of appraisers this launch will allow us to commit the highest level of service to all of our clients. Our primary goal is to provide you a service that is easy to understand and efficient to use. Our technology keeps you informed every step of the way with a list of complete order tracking and online/email updates. Our solution will keep you in compliance.

For more information please contact our customer service department at 1-800-955-5238 option 8 or your account executive today.

What's New in Mortgage at Sarma?

Just released this past week, our system has great new features for our clients. Here are some highlights:

• Print Score Disclosure Feature Saves Files to Wherever You Choose - The Print Score Disclosure feature isenhanced to allow you to save files locally.  When using File | Print Score Disclosure,Generate File.   Rather than print score disclosures right away, you can designate where to save the files locally to print at a later time.
• Fannie/Freddie Narratives Available on All Reports With Blend Services - For clients using Blend services, if a narrative for FMAC or FNMA exists, the narrative will be present in the report regardless of the preferred bureau setting.  This automatic enhancement is designed to help you better identify accounts that are FNMA or FMAC owned.  
• New Addons Improve Consumer Readability - Two new output add-ons are available for the PDF Derog report to provide more information about the borrower
  •  Use 'Include Former Addresses' to list borrowers' former addresses
  • Use 'Include AKAs' to list any alternate names associated with the borrower
• PDF Lender Report Addon Displays Borrower Information for Easy Reference - A new addon for the PDF Lender Report will enable the display of borrower and co-borrower phone numbers in the Applicant Information section of the report.  When the new €˜Display borrower phone number in header addon is enabled, and if phones numbers for borrower/co-borrower are entered at the time a report is ordered, the information will be available within the report.

Additional Enhancements to SharperLending . . .

• Add Attachments When Creating Supplements - To make sure your clients ordering credit through SharperLending is smooth and efficient we added the ability to upload an attachment when ordering Supplements.  With this enhancement, you will be able to include documentation regarding trade pay off, bank statements, receipts, etc, with their Supplement requests.

Coming Soon: New Orders Dashboard Delivers Better Management Tools

Here at Sarma, we've been hard at work making AppraisalComply  into your all-in-one real estate appraisal control panel.  To provide you with better management tools that give you a faster, easier, and more transparent view into your appraisals and your data, we will soon be adding an interactive element that lets you and your clients organize and sort your orders however you like. 

In the next week or so, we plan to release a new AppraisalComply Orders Dashboard that increases the level of control you have over your existing orders.  From choosing which appraisals you want to keep an eye on, to quickly managing your pipeline of active appraisals, in addition to easier searching abilities and a new Help option, the upcoming AppraisalComply Orders Dashboard helps you get more out of AppraisalComply than you are getting today. 

The enhanced AppraisalComply Orders Dashboard makes it easier to filter your orders list to display orders that interest you most €“ orders that need to be assigned, orders that are Overdue, orders with pending price change requests, and many more.  The new tools break orders down into Pipeline orders (orders currently in the works) and Post Delivery orders (orders that may require attention after the report has been delivered).  You can use the pipeline or pie chart to filter down and view specific types of orders.

Achieve Growth From Small Business

The small business market is still widely viewed as a largely untapped revenue source. If you re not targeting this segment, are you losing out? TransUnion can help you take a proactive approach to the small business market, enabling you to add this highly profitable segment to your portfolio. Download our overview to learn all the details

Bigger returns on more small business

Currently, few solutions provide high-quality matches when identifying small business customers. The TransUnion Small Business Identification Solution delivers detailed information on your current small business customers and potential customers with more success than ever before.

Cross-selling on target

Even if institutions can identify their small business customers, often the data is not enough to optimize marketing campaigns toward the customers with the most revenue potential.

Stronger, more strategically prioritized leads

Today, many small business acquisition leads are treated equally €“ without insight into the quality or potential of the lead. The TransUnion Small Business Identification Solution will help you optimize efforts and resources during the acquisition process by delivering  match categories.

TransUnion OFAC Alerts Enhanced

Sarma's mortgage platform is enhanced to provide you with more comprehensive OFAC results on TransUnion reports.  While the TransUnion OFAC alert currently notifies you with an alert on hits, you will now also receive written confirmation when the TransUnion OFAC result returns a no-hit.

With this enhancement be advised that you will now receive a complete no-hit statement if OFAC does not return a record.  You may already receive OFAC statements and no-hit indicators on reports from other bureaus. This release expands the OFAC statement to be accessed specifically with bureau reports pulled from TransUnion.

A few reminders:

• Clients who wish to receive OFAC alerts from TransUnion must be enabled at the bureau level.
• OFAC results are listed in the Alerts section of the credit report, including no-hit results.  No-hits will be displayed with the wording TransUnion returned a no-hit on this inquiry.
• Along with the notification in the Alerts section, the full OFAC statement will print on the report as well.
• Clients currently receiving OFAC alerts from TransUnion do not need any additional setup.  They will automatically begin receiving the OFAC no-hit statement on all applicable reports.

Sarma Launches AppraisalComply Express Offering a Standalone UAD Check Solution

Offering fast and easy UAD Reviews and PDF extractions with AF Express €“ the UAD solution for all your needs! AC Express works with any completed XML appraisal - including those delivered to lenders outside of Appraisal Comply.

The bad news - Many appraisal types need to be UAD compliant €“ not just those submitted to UCDP. USDA, FHA, and VA are all requiring UAD-compliant appraisals. Regulating this process can be a time consuming and arduous task for you.

The good news €“ We have taken the headache out of delivering UAD compliant appraisals with our AC Express product. We have created a UAD focused offering for lenders that are hesitant to use the Appraisal Comply platform for all of their appraisal orders but still want to evaluate an appraisal for UAD compliance or submit the appraisal to UCDP.

What is AC Express?

AC Express offera a crucial feature that most lenders need today.  Orders that run through AC Express are separate from your main appraisal orders. AC Express is exclusively for appraisals that have already been completed and you want to run a UAD Check or view a PDF from an XML-formatted appraisal individually.

Offer a UAD compliant appraisal validation to lenders for FHA, VA, and USDA loans - loan types that do not need to be submitted to UCDP but where UAD format is still required. This allows you to run comprehensive UAD reviews quickly to make sure a report is UAD compliant prior to submitting to UCDP.

This enables you to run UAD checks on an as-needed basis, rather than applying the feature to all orders (also available). Provides a free service of extracting readable PDF formatted reports from XML files.

You can use AC Express to evaluate any UAD-compatible report against a 300 point UAD review €“ to ensure the report is UAD compliant. This comes in especially handy for loan programs that require UAD-compliant appraisals that do not need to be submitted to UCDP, such as FHA, VA, and USDA loans. 

Want to know more? Ask a sales associate or contact us today to get started with AppraisalComply or AppraisalComply Express!