Unlocking Doors: The Promise and Peril of Using Alternative Data in Mortgage Underwriting

About the Event

The use of utility, telecommunications, and rental (UTR) payment history in mortgage underwriting has attracted recent policy attention as a potential strategy to reduce the nation’s persistent homeownership and wealth gaps. Such data show how households manage their monthly expenses and could be particularly important for evaluating consumers who have little or no traditional credit history, including disproportionate numbers of households of color, consumers with low incomes, young adults, and recent immigrants.

Building on their report about the use of utility, telecommunications and rental payments history for credit underwriting, FinRegLab and the Urban Institute hosted a webinar in April 2022 to examine the current state of play and the evolving policy landscape. Leaders from the field discussed data access and quality and how to build more robust scoring and underwriting models.

Opening Remarks

Overview of the Joint Report

Keynote Speaker

Panel 1: Building Better Models (With New and Old Data)

Panel 2: Data Access Issues