HCO User's Guide for Mortgage Professionals - Fannie Mae

Home Counselor Online™

User’s Guide forMortgage Professionals

February 2007

© 2007 Fannie Mae. All rights reserved.

Desktop Originator, Desktop Underwriter, DO, and DU are registered trademarks of Fannie Mae. Home Counselor Online is a trademark of Fannie Mae. Microsoft Internet Explorer is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

HCO User’s Guide for Mortgage Professionals 3

Contents Chapter 1: Getting Started with HCO..........................................................................................4

What is Home Counselor Online™ (HCO)? .............................................................................4 How can I set up my loan application pipeline? .......................................................................5 What kind of data can I expect? ................................................................................................6 What terms do I need to know?.................................................................................................6 How secure is HCO?.................................................................................................................7

Chapter 2: Receiving Loan Applications using Automated Referral ..........................................9 Introduction...............................................................................................................................9 Understanding automated referral setup .................................................................................10 Logging in to HCO .................................................................................................................11 Setting up an agency relationship ...........................................................................................13 Confirming an automated referral request ..............................................................................17 Logging out of HCO ...............................................................................................................19 Receiving loan application data ..............................................................................................20 Deactivating an automated referral relationship .....................................................................23


Chapter 1: Getting Started with HCO

What is Home Counselor Online™ (HCO)? Home Counselor Online (HCO) is a dynamic, free, and efficient Web-based means of bringing housing professionals (counselors, lenders, and mortgage brokers) together to help consumers prepare for, apply for, and receive home loans -- as well as to provide the post-purchase support necessary to remain successful homeowners. HCO enables you to become part of a network of mortgage providers that housing counselors can depend on to work with their mortgage-ready clients. HCO enables you to receive loan applications from housing counselors directly into Desktop Originator® (DO®) or Desktop Underwriter® (DU®). HCO facilitates the flow of loans to DO/DU in an efficient and secure way. It helps you to increase your business productivity and streamline the process of empowering potential borrowers to take the next step to homeownership.

If you are a lender or mortgage broker who is already using DO/DU, this guide will help you quickly get set up. You’ll find step-by-step instructions for using HCO’s automated referral feature to receive loan applications from participating housing counseling agencies at the request of their clients. For information on using HCO’s other tools, refer to Home Counselor Online User’s Guide for Housing Counselors or to the Home Counselor Online User’s Guide for Agency Administrators for information on setting up and maintaining HCO.

The diagram on the next page shows the process of receiving a loan from HCO into your DO/DU institution.


HCO’s Automated Referral to a Mortgage Professional

How can I set up my loan application pipeline? The relationship that you establish with a counseling agency using HCO’s automated referral tool enables you to create a flow of pre-counseled, potential borrowers or a “loan application pipeline” right into your DO/DU institution. This guide explains how to set up your loan application pipeline in HCO. Before you set up your pipeline, you’ll need to make sure that you:

• Complete Fannie Mae’s software subscription process for HCO.

• Designate at least one user as an HCO-Agency Administrator in HCO and in Profile Access Manager.

Tip: For more information on the necessary setup steps, visit eFannieMae.com and go to the Home Counselor Online and Profile Access Manager Details pages. For help with completing the software subscription process for HCO, send an e-mail to [email protected].

• Identify a DO/DU institution that you want to use to receive loan applications from HCO. Your HCO administrator will need to log in and perform the setup steps in HCO. Refer to Setting up an agency relationship on page 13.

Important: We recommend that you dedicate one of your existing DO/DU institutions for the purpose of receiving loan applications from HCO. You’ll need to enter the name and ID of this institution in HCO to start the flow of loan applications into DO/DU. To designate the DO/DU institution that you want to receive loan applications from HCO, send an e-mail to [email protected].

Agency uses “automated referral” to send case file data to mortgage professional of client’s choice in HCO by completing automated e-mail notification

Mortgage professional receives e-mail notification with link to case file data

Counseling Agency

Client is counseled until mortgage-ready

Submit loan to DO/DU for underwriting

Agency enters client data in HCO

With the client’s consent, relationships between mortgage professionals and counseling agencies require communication outside of HCO to keep potential borrowers from falling out of the pipeline and to keep each other aware of changes in the potential borrower’s status.

Mortgage Professional

mailto:[email protected]



Tip: If you have several branch locations, only one branch needs to become the HCO subscriber. However, we recommend that you designate a separate DO/DU institution for each branch location. For help with setting up one or more institutions to receive referrals from HCO, send an e-mail to [email protected].

What kind of data can I expect? HCO’s automated referral feature enables housing counseling agencies to transmit, after client approval, a housing counseling client’s Uniform Residential Loan Application (Form 1003) data. The data will provide you with a record of the relevant financial information about an applicant who is applying for a conventional one-to-four family mortgage. The Form 1003 data created by HCO meets Fannie Mae’s requirements for a Uniform Residential Loan Application form.

What terms do I need to know? Most terms used in this guide are familiar to mortgage professionals. The terms and definitions listed below provide a clear understanding of the way the term is being used in HCO, DO/DU, and in this guide.

Term Usage Agency Term used in HCO to describe housing

counseling organizations and mortgage professionals.

Agency relationship A link created between two agencies in HCO for the purpose of transmitting the relevant Form 1003 data of pre-counseled clients upon client approval.

Automated referral An HCO tool designed to create a link between counseling agencies and mortgage professionals, allowing them to transmit data for the purpose of streamlining the mortgage process.

Counseling organization Non-profit, faith-based, or multi-cultural organization that educates members of the community in the home buying and homeownership process.

Counselor A person who helps a consumer plan a budget to pay his or her bills on time as well as to understand the costs and ongoing financial responsibilities of homeownership.



Term Usage DO/DU casefile In DO/DU, a casefile contains the online

loan application data (Form 1003) for a borrower, along with any associated underwriting findings and/or credit report results.

Form 1003 The Uniform Residential Loan Application. The lender uses this form to record relevant financial information about an applicant who applies for a conventional one- to four-family mortgage.

HCO case file An electronic data record that is created by HCO. An HCO case file may contain contact, demographic, and financial data that a counselor captures for a client in HCO. During the automated referral process, loan application data that is included in the HCO case file is sent to DO/DU as a Form 1003.

Home-Buyer Education (HBE)

Classes designed to educate clients about home buying and homeownership.

Loan application pipeline A term used to describe a streamlined means of transmitting loan application requests from a housing counselor to a mortgage professional.

Mortgage broker A person or firm that specializes in loan originations, receiving a commission to bring together the borrower and a lender.

Mortgage professional Lenders and mortgage brokers.

Profile Access Manager A Fannie Mae application that allows you to manage your own user profile for Fannie Mae applications such as HCO and DO/DU.

How secure is HCO? HCO is completely password protected. Each HCO user is given access to HCO only after his or her authority to access the application is verified using a unique user ID and password that is assigned to that user. HCO users are required to enter their user ID and password to access any part of the application. As an additional security measure, HCO will automatically log you out after 60 minutes of inactivity to prevent unauthorized personnel from accessing your data while your computer is idle or you are away from your desk.


Important: Please keep in mind that passwords will need to be reset periodically. HCO users should not share their user ID and password with anyone.

Profile Access Manager provides you with an additional level of security. It allows administrators within your organization to manage application access, user IDs, and passwords. For more information, see the Profile Access Manager page on eFannieMae.com.


Chapter 2: Receiving Loan Applications using Automated

Referral

Introduction HCO uses the term “agency” to refer to lending institutions, mortgage brokers, and housing counseling organizations. A relationship between agencies or an “agency relationship” is created in HCO when two agencies establish a connection in HCO that, after client approval, allows one agency access to approved Form 1003 data from the other agency’s portfolio. Automated referral is a type of agency relationship. It can benefit mortgage professionals and housing counselors by creating a streamlined mortgage approval process.

HCO’s automated referral feature provides mortgage professionals with loan application (Form 1003) data from the client’s HCO case file, while retaining the client case file in the housing counseling agency’s portfolio.

Using HCO’s automated referral feature allows you to create relationships with housing counseling agencies that can help you to:

• Reach first time home buyers, including borrowers in underserved areas;

• Maintain a steady source of leads that can be tracked and kept in a separate mortgage pipeline;

• Increase your pipeline of pre-counseled, mortgage-ready leads;

• Minimize origination and underwriting costs with the efficiencies of a streamlined system; and

• Save time by not having to enter Form 1003 data.

In short, HCO’s automated referral feature can help you expand your market share.


Understanding automated referral setup HCO electronically links participating housing counseling organizations and mortgage professionals in a secure and efficient way through its automated referral feature. Using automated referral allows housing counselors to transmit the loan application (Form 1003) data of pre-counseled clients to mortgage professionals’ DO/DU institutions with the click of a button.

This time-saving feature reduces the need to re-enter data in DO/DU, allowing you to start the underwriting process sooner and to arrive at a credit recommendation more quickly and easily. It also gives you an opportunity to send potential borrowers who are “not quite ready” to receive a loan approval back to the referring counseling agency for additional counseling. The relationship that you create with housing counselors through HCO gives both organizations the opportunity to ensure that potential borrowers don’t get derailed on their road to homeownership.

There are certain responsibilities that each agency must be aware of before entering into an automated referral relationship:

• A housing counseling agency or a branch of your own organization can initiate an automated referral relationship.

• HCO requires that an agency using automated referral get client approval before transmitting Form 1003 data.

• You must confirm an automated referral relationship with the housing counseling agency in HCO before the loan application data can be transmitted to you.

To create an automated referral agency relationship, complete the following steps, which will be covered in greater detail later in this guide:

1. Make your organization available for automated referral. For details, see Setting up an agency relationship on page 13.

2. Notify the housing counseling agency (outside of HCO) that you are now available to receive automated referrals. Let the housing counseling agency know what institution name you listed on the Referrals page under Set up.

3. Ask the housing counseling agency to go into HCO and request an automated referral relationship with you.

• The housing counseling agency should select “automated referral” as the relationship type.

• You will receive an e-mail notifying you of the request.

4. Log in to HCO to confirm the request for automated referral—finalizing the agency relationship setup. Refer to Confirming an automated referral request on page 17. You will receive an e-mail containing a link to the loan application data for each referral you receive through HCO.


5. Click the link in the e-mail from the housing counseling agency to view the loan application data in your DO/DU institution. See Receiving loan application data on page 20.

Although HCO can help you to receive loan application data, much of the work of cultivating an agency relationship is done outside of HCO – usually through phone calls and e-mails, as well as other means. Creating channels of communication that keep potential borrowers from falling out of the home buying process is a critical piece of the puzzle that, for mortgage professionals, can lead to increased market share.

Tip: When an automated referral relationship no longer meets the needs of the agencies involved, HCO makes it easy to deactivate the relationship. Refer to Deactivating an automated referral relationship on page 23.

Logging in to HCO Mortgage professionals only need to log in to HCO to update their user information, set up or confirm agency relationships, or to avoid being locked out of HCO due to long periods of inactivity.

Tip: To retain access to HCO, you should periodically log in to HCO and remember to update the password that you were given to access HCO and DO/DU when prompted. If you have problems accessing HCO, call the Fannie Mae Customer Contact Center at 1-877-722-6757.

To log in to HCO, complete the following steps:

1. Type https://hco.efanniemae.com/hco in the Address field of your Web browser, and then click Go, as shown below.

Tip: To navigate to the HCO page and open HCO, type http://www.efanniemae.com in the Address field of your Web browser, click the Single-Family button, the Technology Applications link, and then click the Launch link associated with Home Counselor Online.

2. The HCO Log In page appears. Type your user ID in the User ID field and your password in the Password field, and then click Go.

Note: Use the same user ID and password that you use to log in to DO/DU.


3. The Welcome to HCO pop-up message appears. HCO’s welcome message is an opportunity to receive important HCO information. Take a moment to view the information provided to you on this page, and then click the appropriate button at the bottom of the Welcome to HCO page to display HCO’s Home page.

.

4. The HCO Home page appears.


Setting up an agency relationship The first step in setting up an agency relationship is establishing your availability to receive loan application (Form 1003) data from a housing counseling agency. By completing the following steps, you are providing your unique institution ID for use by counseling agencies within HCO. Your unique institution ID allows other agencies to identify you within HCO.

To establish your availability to receive loan application data through HCO’s automated referral feature, complete the following steps:

1. From the Administration menu, select Set Up, and then Referrals.

2. The Set Up Referrals screen appears. Click Establish Availability.


3. The screen expands to display the Establish Availability section at the bottom of the screen. Enter the required institution information, as indicated by the asterisks. For details, see the table below.

Required Field Action

DO/DU Institution Name

Type the name of the institution that will receive the transmitted loan application data.

Note: Even though you will type the institution ID, you need to also identify the particular branch, if applicable. This could be a different branch of your organization, for example, your organization’s Dallas branch, as shown in the example above.

Tip: You do not need to use the exact institution name that you received from Fannie Mae. You can create an institution name that has meaning for you and those who will select your DO/DU institution.

Institution ID In the Institution ID field, type the institution ID for the institution you set up to receive referrals from HCO.

Important: The institution ID is a five or six-digit number that you received from Fannie Mae. Do not confuse it with your nine-digit Seller/Servicer number. Your DO/DU user ID must have access to the institution ID you are using for HCO referrals. If you do not know the correct institution ID to use, send an e-mail to [email protected] or call the Fannie Mae Customer Contact Center at 1-877-722-6757.



Required Field Action

Referral Notification E-mail

Type the e-mail address of the person who will receive a confirmation that loan application data is being sent from HCO.

Tip: It’s important to include your e-mail address in the Referral Notification E-mail field and keep that information up-to-date. HCO uses this e-mail address to notify you of requests for automated referral, to transmit case file data to you once the request has been confirmed, and to notify you that you need to change your HCO password before it expires.

User ID Type the user ID that you use when accessing DO/DU.

Password Type the password you use when accessing DO/DU.

Important: You will need to remember to update your password in the Set Up Referrals screen whenever your login password changes. This will ensure that casefiles continue to flow smoothly into your DO/DU pipeline. If your organization uses the password expiration feature in Profile Access Manager, your password will expire periodically, and you will receive an e-mail letting you know when it is about to expire.

Active Click the check box to indicate that the particular institution ID is active.


4. Click Save after you have entered the required information.

5. The new institution appears in a list at the top of the screen. If HCO is

correctly linked to DO/DU for this institution, the status will read “Successfully tested in HCO.”


Tip: If the status for the institution is “Failed in HCO,” the institution ID, user ID, or password may have been incorrectly entered. To change this information, click the Edit link next to that institution to correct the information. If you are unable to get a “Successfully tested in HCO” message, you can e-mail [email protected] and ask for assistance.

Important: Once you are available to receive loan data, you should let the counseling agency know. Once you are ready to receive loan data, the counseling agency must request an automated referral relationship with you. The counseling agency uses the Agency Relationship link on the Administration menu to make the request.

Confirming an automated referral request When a housing counseling agency requests an automated referral relationship with you through HCO, HCO will automatically notify you via e-mail. The e-mail prompts you to either confirm or deny the counseling agency’s request to initiate an automated referral relationship with you. Confirming the request will allow the requesting counseling agency to send client loan application data directly to your DO/DU institution. Denying the request prevents the agency from doing so.

Important: You do not need to be logged in to HCO to receive this e-mail request; however, you do need to log in to HCO to confirm or deny the request.

The following is an example of the e-mail requesting automated referral:

The e-mail provides the following information:

• The name of the requesting agency, • The requesting agency’s institution ID, • The requesting agency’s phone number, and • Basic instructions for confirming or denying the request.

Tip: You can terminate an automated referral relationship with an agency at any time by making it inactive. Refer to Deactivating an automated referral relationship on page 23.



The following steps describe the process of confirming an agency’s request to transmit loans to you via HCO’s automated referral feature.

1. From the Administration menu, select Set Up, and then Agency Relationships.

2. The Set Up Agency Relationships screen appears. In the

Relationships Requested By Other Agencies section, locate the agency with “Automated DO/DU Referral” as the relationship type and “Requested” as the status, and then click Confirm.

The status of the request changes to “Confirmed,” as shown below.

The counseling agency can now transmit loan application data to your receiving institution.


Logging out of HCO When you’ve finished setting up HCO’s automated referral feature, you can log out of HCO and continue to work outside of HCO. Once you’ve set up automated referral, there is no need to log into HCO unless you need to update information, confirm an automated referral relationship with a counseling agency, or update your password or e-mail address.

To log out of HCO, complete the following steps:

1. Click the Log Out button next to the HCO links at the top of the Home page.

The Log In screen shown below appears.

2. Click File on the Web browser menu, and then click Close.

The HCO application and the Web browser will close.


Receiving loan application data When an agency uses HCO’s automated referral feature to transmit loan application data to you, you will be notified via an e-mail that contains a link to DO/DU. The e-mail also contains the DO/DU casefile ID that allows you to identify the casefile in DO/DU. It also references the HCO case file number and ID for use when communicating with the counseling agency.

Important: You do not need to log into HCO to receive an automated referral e-mail notification.

To receive loan application data transmitted from HCO to DO/DU, complete the following steps:

1. Click the link in the e-mail that you receive from the requesting agency to launch DO/DU.

Important: Please note that the DO/DU casefile ID and the HCO case file ID are not the same.

2. The DO/DU Login page appears. Type your Fannie Mae user ID and password and then click the Login button.


3. The Loan List screen appears. The Loan List screen allows you to select the search criteria that DO/DU will use to identify the casefile that was transmitted to your agency from HCO. Click the dropdown arrow in the Institution field to select the institution that you set up in HCO to receive loan application data from the requesting agency.

4. Refer to the table below to review the search criteria available to you on

the Loan List screen.

Field Action

Last Modified/Range

Click the dropdown arrow to select the timeframe in which the loan was last modified. For example, if you just received a casefile the day before, you could search for it by using the shortest time period search criteria (1 day).

Search Field Select the search criteria, such as Casefile ID, Loan Number, or Borrower’s Last Name, and then type the corresponding data in the Keyword field. DO/DU will search for the keyword.

Keyword Type a keyword associated with the search criteria indicated in the Search field. (In this example, the DO/DU casefile ID is used to search for the casefile that was transmitted using automated referral.)

Tip: You can look in the subject line of the automated referral e-mail to find the correct DO/DU casefile ID.


5. Click the Find Loan button to begin the search.

6. All loans that meet the search criteria you entered are listed. Click the link in the Borrower field to display the transmitted loan application data.

The Loan Information screen appears. In DO/DU, you can pull credit for a potential borrower by clicking the Edit Loan link and then the appropriate link under Credit on the left side of the DO/DU screen.

Important: Although credit information may already appear in the borrower’s loan application data when the counseling agency transmits the loan application data, you must pull a new credit report for the borrower in DO/DU.

Tip: To view a Quick Steps document that explains how to use DO/DU to submit a loan for an underwriting recommendation, refer to the DO or DU Quick Steps page on eFannieMae.com.


Deactivating an automated referral relationship You can deactivate an automated referral relationship with a housing counseling agency in HCO when you no longer wish to receive loan application data from that agency. To deactivate an automated referral agency relationship, complete the following steps:

1. Log into HCO.

2. Click Administration on the main menu, select Set Up, and then Agency Relationships.

The Set Up Agency Relationships screen appears.

Note: The screen is divided into two sections. The top section includes those agency relationships initiated by your organization. The bottom section includes those agency relationships requested by other agencies, such as housing counseling agencies.


3. To deactivate an agency relationship, go to the appropriate section and then click the Inactivate link associated with the agency with which you will no longer maintain a relationship.

Tip: If the agency relationship was created by your organization, go to the Relationships Initiated By section at the top of the screen. If not, go to the Relationships Requested By Other Agencies section at the bottom of the screen.

The Inactive link disappears and the status (located on the right side of the screen) changes to Inactive.

You have successfully deactivated automated referral with the selected agency.

Documents

HCO User's Guide for Mortgage Professionals - Fannie Mae