How eight more lenders are cutting verification costs, boosting conversion, and earning R&W relief with Argyle
Last year, we rounded up eight mortgage lenders that were winning at verification — NFM Lending, ALCOVA Mortgage, Lake Michigan Credit Union, and others who moved beyond legacy databases and manual processes to build faster, cheaper, more reliable verification workflows.
A year later, the pattern hasn't slowed down. If anything, it's accelerated. More lenders are moving verification of income and employment (VOIE) and verification of assets (VOA) to the point of sale. More are seeing representation and warranty (R&W) relief translate into real reductions in repurchase risk. And more are discovering that when borrowers can connect their own accounts directly, everybody — loan officers, processors, underwriters, and borrowers — comes out ahead.
Here are eight new case studies from lenders who work with Argyle to modernize their verification strategy, along with the results they're seeing.
1. Gold Star Mortgage hits 44% conversion across VOI, VOE and VOA
Gold Star Mortgage Financial Group, a $3 billion-a-year retail and wholesale lender based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, had tried automated verification before Argyle — but a limited employer network and rigid, unbranded borrower communications meant poor conversion and little operational benefit.
After piloting Argyle's payroll-based verification of income and employment, Gold Star extended the same model to assets. Borrower-connected verification now covers 90% of the U.S. workforce, and Gold Star has used branded, customizable borrower messaging to build trust rather than confusion during the connection process.
"The Argyle employer footprint is a lot greater than other solutions in the market, and it really has proved to be true," says Jared Peterson, division vice president at Gold Star. "We've consistently hit above average on the connection rates and the conversion."
Over its first 12 months with Argyle, Gold Star achieved an average verification completion rate of 44% across VOI, VOE and VOA — a number the team expects to keep climbing as internal adoption grows.
.png)
2. First Financial Bank cuts verification costs by more than 60%
First Financial Bank, a Texas-based institution with a mortgage division of roughly 35 loan officers, had relied on The Work Number for years. As invoices climbed into the thousands and incomplete data forced processors into manual follow-up, the bank went looking for an alternative.
First Financial paired direct payroll connections with Argyle's Doc VOI functionality as a fallback, so income data can come straight from documents like pay stubs and W-2s when a direct connection isn't available. The bank moved verification upstream into its point-of-sale platform, nCino, making Argyle its primary method for VOI and VOE.
"It really changed how we think about verifications — we're not defaulting to expensive reports anymore," says Sue Ann Scott, mortgage business analyst at First Financial.
The results: verification spend down more than 60%, a consistent borrower connection rate of around 50%, and a meaningful increase in R&W relief thanks to Doc VOI.
Read First Financial's full story
3. First United Bank slashes verification spend by 65%
First United Bank, one of the largest privately held community banking organizations in the U.S., had pulled verification back from the point of sale to control costs — a move that improved spend but reduced early borrower engagement.
After seeing Argyle's payroll-based VOI and VOE in action, and confirming native integration with its Encompass® loan origination system, First United partnered with Argyle and LenderLogix to embed verification directly into its point-of-sale platform, LiteSpeed.
"We feel comfortable putting payroll-based VOI and VOE in front of every borrower," says Gerrin Chenault, vice president and director of project administration and mortgage systems at First United. "At Argyle's price point, even if more than half complete the verification, the economics still make sense."
Monthly verification costs dropped from approximately $125,000 to under $40,000 — a 65% reduction — while completion reached 47% in peak months and Day 1 Certainty® results held steady.
Read First United's full story
4. Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group projects $983,500 in annual savings
Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group, an independent retail lender based in Virginia Beach, was watching verification invoices climb every month while borrowers navigated a paperwork-heavy process that felt out of step with every other financial experience in their lives.
After stacking providers against a detailed set of requirements, Atlantic Bay chose Argyle and embedded it directly into a custom loan application built in nCino — pairing the rollout with operations training, borrower-experience walkthroughs, and updated origination scripts.
"We literally built an Excel spreadsheet of every criterion that mattered to us and stacked the providers against it. Argyle landed on top, especially for income validation," says John Wines, chief strategy officer at Atlantic Bay.
From January through March, Atlantic Bay estimates it saved $245,875 by using Argyle instead of costlier verification methods — a pace that projects to $983,500 in annualized savings. Loans where borrowers connected through Argyle also scored one point higher on Net Promoter Score than loans where they didn't.
Read Atlantic Bay's full story
5. Compass Mortgage cuts costs 43% and lifts conversion into the 50s
Compass Mortgage, a retail independent mortgage banker based in Warrenville, Illinois, had cycled through multiple verification providers — including The Work Number — without finding a dependable, cost-effective fit. High fees and mismatched borrower data meant constant follow-up with employers.
After evaluating Argyle alongside other options available through its point-of-sale platform, Blend, Compass moved Argyle to the top of its verification waterfall and activated Doc VOI as a fallback for borrowers without a direct payroll connection.
"Consistency and simplicity were key factors in our decision to select Argyle for verification," says Kim Lewis, vice president of strategic initiatives at Compass.
VOIE conversion climbed to a consistent 58%, up from an average around 41% (and as low as 33%) with prior providers. Verification costs fell 43%, and 37.5% of Doc VOI submissions have received AIM validation for R&W relief.
Read Compass Mortgage's full story
6. Absolute Home Mortgage sees 5x higher automated VOIE success
Absolute Home Mortgage, an independent mortgage banker licensed in more than 25 states, had automated verification completion stuck below 10% — the result of a manual, loan officer-driven process that delayed verification until late in the loan cycle.
CEO Matt VanFossen skipped the usual pilot phase, integrating Argyle directly into The Big Point of Sale via ICE Mortgage Technology's Encompass Partner Connect APIs. Borrowers now receive a text prompting them to connect their payroll account at the point of application.
"The setup took me about half an hour," VanFossen says. "We just flipped the switch company-wide and trusted Argyle to perform."
Within months, automated verification completion rose from 10% to 48% — a fivefold increase — with nearly half of loans hitting underwriting with income data already synced through Fannie Mae's Day 1 Certainty®.
Read Absolute Home Mortgage's full story
7. Renasant Bank earns R&W relief on more than half its loans
Renasant Bank, a 280-branch institution serving eight states, sells nearly all of its loans on the secondary market — which meant the inefficiencies of its previous verification provider, The Work Number, carried outsized risk.
Renasant chose Argyle for its direct-source approach and its integration with Empower by Dark Matter Technologies, the bank's LOS and point-of-sale platform. Argyle now sits at the top of the bank's verification waterfall, giving loan officers, processors and underwriters a full income picture within minutes of an application.
"By switching to Argyle, we get way more information, and it's way more accurate," says Betsy Turner, mortgage LOS support analyst at Renasant.
Renasant sees a 70% take rate on Argyle verifications, a 58% completion rate among borrowers who opt in, and R&W relief on more than half of its Fannie Mae-delivered loans using Argyle data — alongside a 20-minutes-per-loan savings in underwriting and an 80% reduction in verification costs.
8. Mutual of Omaha Mortgage saves over $600,000 a year
Mutual of Omaha Mortgage, which processes roughly 2,000 VOIE orders a month, was watching per-file costs spike as high as $200 through legacy databases — especially on files with multiple borrowers or reverifications.
After running a detailed cost analysis, the team moved verification volume from The Work Number to Argyle and shifted it upstream into its point-of-sale platform, nCino, with results flowing automatically into Encompass.
"Too many providers throw out inflated ROI assumptions without really understanding your business," says Lucas Curtolo, senior vice president of operations at Mutual of Omaha Mortgage. "With Argyle, the math was easy and just made sense."
Monthly savings now exceed $50,000 — more than $600,000 annualized — with faster loan processing and stronger positioning for GSE R&W relief.
Read Mutual of Omaha's full story
The pattern holds: move verification earlier, and everyone wins
Across all eight customer stories, the same shift keeps showing up: lenders moving verification from a late-stage, cost-driven afterthought to an early, consumer-permissioned step at the point of sale. That single change is doing a lot of work — for cost, for conversion, and for loan quality.
Cost savings compound fast. From First United's 65% reduction to Renasant's 80%, and from Atlantic Bay's six-figure annualized projection to Mutual of Omaha's $600K, the lenders in this roundup are consistently finding that borrower-permissioned verification costs a fraction of what legacy databases charge per file.
Point-of-sale placement drives conversion. Whether it's Absolute Home Mortgage's 5x jump after embedding verification in its POS or First Financial's improved connection rates once verification moved upstream, asking borrowers to connect earlier — with clear, branded communication — consistently outperforms asking later.
R&W relief is now a headline result, not a footnote. Renasant's more-than-50% relief rate and Compass's AIM validations on Doc VOI submissions point to a broader trend: as agencies continue investing in consumer-permissioned data, lenders using direct-source verification are better positioned for representation and warranty relief and reduced repurchase risk.
This mirrors what we outlined in last year's roundup and in our breakdown of the smart verification waterfall: the lenders seeing the biggest gains are the ones treating direct-source, consumer-permissioned data as the default — not the exception.
.png)
Ready to see your own results?
Reach out to Argyle's team to learn how our consumer-permissioned verification platform can help your organization lower costs, increase conversion, and strengthen loan quality for mortgage lending.
