Underwriting Pre-Screen
Before an underwriter touches a deal, confirm it is complete, clears the lender's eligibility box, and is worth their time - then route it to underwriting, decline, or request-info.
What it extracts
12 extraction fields
- Pre-Screen Summary
- A one-look roll-up of the incoming deal - applicant, purpose, product, amount, collateral, occupancy, channel, and date - so a triage analyst can orient before running any check.
- Loan Request Snapshot
- The specific applicant-stated request facts the knockouts and ratio checks depend on - amount, product, purpose, property/collateral type, state, occupancy, value, income or rent, and credit score - captured as submitted and unverified.
- Intake Completeness Checklist
- The process-readiness gate: whether each document an underwriter needs is Present, Missing, or N/A, so an incomplete file is caught before it consumes underwriting time.
- All Required Documents Present
- A single process-readiness flag - true only when every applicable required document is present - that separates a decisionable file from one that needs more information.
- Eligibility Knockout Checklist
- The underwriting-readiness gate: quick bright-line go/no-go tests against the lender's box - product offered, lending footprint, loan-amount limits, purpose, collateral type, occupancy, borrower type, and hard exclusions - each Pass, Fail, or Review.
- Passes Eligibility Knockouts
- A single eligibility flag - true only when no bright-line knockout failed - that decides whether the deal can move forward or must be declined at pre-screen.
- Preliminary Ratio Sanity Check
- Directional back-of-the-envelope checks on the headline ratios (preliminary LTV, DSCR, DTI, and credit band) using applicant-stated figures - a sanity read, not the verified underwriting recomputation done downstream.
- Preliminary Ratios In Range
- A directional flag - true when no headline preliminary ratio is clearly out of typical program range - based on unverified stated figures.
- Red Flags
- The early showstoppers and inconsistencies an intake analyst catches on a first pass - value mismatches, stale documents, occupancy/purpose mismatches, undisclosed parties, derogatory events - each with severity and a suggested action.
- Outstanding Items to Request
- The consolidated punch list of documents and data needed to make the file decisionable, with the reason, who to request it from, and priority - the actionable output on a not-ready file.
- Pre-Screen Routing Decision
- The single triage outcome - Ready, Ready with watch items, Not ready (request information), Refer to human triage, or Decline (fails eligibility) - with a knockout failure taking precedence over incompleteness.
- Triage Rationale and Next Step
- A tight narrative of why the deal was routed as it was and the single next action to take, with the driving values cited - decision support for a human, not a credit decision.
Where it fits
Loan application pre-screen / intake triage
Upstream
Application intake - a borrower, broker, correspondent, or vendor/dealer submits a loan application package (application, identity/entity documents, income or property cash-flow documents, assets, collateral/valuation information, credit authorization, disclosures)
This step
Pre-screen / triage
Downstream
- Full underwriting (DSCR Loan Underwriting, Equipment-Finance Underwriting)
- Appraisal Review
- Loan Boarding
- Decline with ECOA / Regulation B adverse-action notice
What it needs
Documents
- Signed loan application (URLA / Form 1003 for residential, or a signed commercial credit application)
- Borrower identity documents and entity formation / good-standing documents
- Income or property cash-flow documents (pay stubs, tax returns, leases / rent schedule, business financials)
- Asset / bank statements
- Subject-collateral information (purchase contract, or existing loan/property information on a refinance)
- Preliminary valuation basis (ordered appraisal, AVM, BPO, or equipment invoice/quote)
- Credit-pull authorization and any soft-pull credit result
- Payoff and title / vesting evidence (on a refinance)
- Property or collateral insurance evidence or indication
Systems
- Loan origination system (LOS)
- Document repository
- Point-of-sale / application portal
Prerequisites
- Your program guidelines / eligibility box (offered products, lending footprint, loan-amount limits, eligible purposes, property/collateral types, occupancy, borrower types)
- Your intake document checklist (what a complete file requires by product)
- Your headline ratio thresholds (LTV cap, DSCR floor, DTI cap, credit-score minimum) as configurable placeholders
What it produces
A pre-screen report: an applicant summary, a process-readiness completeness checklist, a bright-line eligibility knockout checklist, a preliminary ratio sanity check, a red-flag list, a consolidated outstanding-items punch list, and a route-to-underwriting / decline / request-info decision with rationale
Delivered to
- Loan origination system
- Underwriting queue
- Applicant / referral-source follow-up (outstanding-items list)
- Adverse-action / decline workflow
Review model
An intake analyst or junior underwriter reviews the routing decision, the Review-level knockouts, the red flags, and the outstanding-items list before the file is routed forward, declined, or sent back for information. The agent produces triage decision support, not the credit decision.
Who uses it
Volume fit
Works best for
lenders and their broker/correspondent/vendor channels pre-screening dozens or hundreds of applications a month, where underwriter time is the bottleneck
Too small for
a very low-volume desk where an underwriter can eyeball each new file faster than reviewing a triage report
Grounded in
- Equal Credit Opportunity Act / Regulation B, 12 CFR 1002.9 (Adverse-action notifications); 12 CFR 1002.2(f) (definition of a completed application)verified as of 2026-07-22
- Fannie Mae Uniform Residential Loan Application (URLA) / Form 1003verified as of 2026-07-22
- Debt Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR) convention: DSCR = gross rent / PITIA — used here only as a preliminary directional sanity check on stated figuresverified as of 2026-07-22
- Loan-to-value (LTV) and debt-to-income (DTI) underwriting conventions — preliminary thresholds as configurable placeholdersverified as of 2026-07-22
Changelog
- July 2026
built to industry best practice (no customer export; authored from standard loan-intake / pre-underwriting triage practice)
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See Underwriting Pre-Screen on your documents
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