Identity Verification Services by Rapid Reporting

Fort Worth, Texas-based Rapid Reporting is a national provider of pre-funding income and identity verification products for financial institutions to help combat fraud. Jay Meadows, president and CEO, and Ray Petta, COO, founded the privately held verification company in 1998.

The company demonstrated to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) the need to take income verification from a post-funding tool to a pre-funding tool to help decrease the occurence of fraud during the loan process. The company established a program with the IRS that enables lenders to obtain tax transcripts directly from the nation’s tax collection agency. Rapid Reporting became a leader in the process by bringing tax transcripts to the mortgage industry within 24 to 48 hours for verification of income. According to the IRS, Rapid Reporting is the largest income verification vendor to the mortgage industry.

In 2001, Rapid Reporting became the first private company to form a relationship with the Social Security Administration (SSA) for the purpose of initiating a program for the financial industry to authenticate Social Security numbers. This program allows financial institutions to verify that the data provided by an individual either matches or does not match the SSA data. In 2002, the company launched its identity verification product, DirectChek. While other companies identify individuals by means of public repository data, Rapid Reporting identifies individuals by including definitive results obtained directly from the SSA. Public repository or “harvested” data cannot always be relied upon because it only monitors the use of a Social Security number, which can be manipulated, and it does not authenticate the Social Security number. Rapid Reporting goes straight to the source, the SSA, and verifies the issuance of a Social Security number to a particular individual.

Rapid Reporting’s core offerings are IncomeChek, which is used to verify income, and DirectChek, which meets USA Patriot Act compliance, and is used to verify identity. The products operate over a secure, Intranet, Web-based portal used by financial institutions and provides an efficient and cost effective means to confirm the identity and income of a borrower. Clients are provided multiple options for secure channel data transmissions to incorporate into their workflow. Clients are given the option of order entry by individual users, use of Virtual Private Networks, customized integration with their LOS, and/or by XML feeds. Clients also have access to custom reports showing the effectiveness of the verification dollars spent at the branch or corporate level. Clients are also provided layers of administrative rights for controlling access to confidential borrower information.

Rapid Reporting is committed to safeguarding the confidentiality of data. The company has three lines of defense:

• Secured socket layer (SSL) encrypted data transmission on an DigiCert certified secure channel,
• Firewall technology designed to prevent unauthorized access to or from a private network when connected to the internet, and
• All data is stored on individual database servers that are isolated from web access.

These security features meet or exceed all federal, state or local requirements for maintaining data integrity. Rapid Reporting maintains a staff in Washington, D.C. to continue to work and build relationships with government agencies. The company has clients from coast to coast in the United States and works with 17 of the top 20 U.S. mortgage companies.