One Link, Complete Verification: How RAVEN Works for Community Banks
What if verifying a borrower took 5 minutes instead of 5 weeks?
The average mortgage origination requires 16 separate documents, runs through a 55-item checklist, generates a 500-page file, and takes 42 days to close (ICE Mortgage Technology, MBA, 2025). The average cost: $11,094 per loan originated, with only $785 in profit at the end (MBA, 2025). Most of that time and cost is not spent making lending decisions. It is spent collecting and verifying data.
RAVEN replaces the collection phase. One link. One borrower interaction. Complete verification data back to the bank in minutes — identity, income, employment, property, and fraud screening — cross-referenced from seven providers with a full audit trail.
Here is exactly how it works.
The Current Process
A borrower walks into a branch or fills out an online application. The loan officer collects basic information, then begins the verification process.
Pull a credit report. Request pay stubs. Call the employer for verification. Wait for bank statements. Order an appraisal. Run KYC checks. Screen against OFAC and PEP watchlists. Cross-reference the address. Confirm employment dates. Check for fraud indicators.
Each of these steps involves a different system, a different provider, and often a different person. The loan officer toggles between platforms, re-enters data, waits for responses, and chases down discrepancies. Some verifications come back in hours. Others take days. An appraisal can take two weeks.
Meanwhile, the borrower waits. And 68% of mortgage applicants who start this process abandon it before closing. Among borrowers who experience digital friction, 48% take their business to a competitor (J.D. Power, Plaid).
The process is not broken because bankers are slow. It is broken because the workflow requires serial, manual interactions with dozens of systems that were never designed to talk to each other.
The RAVEN Process
RAVEN compresses the verification phase into a single borrower interaction.
Step 1: Loan officer initiates. The loan officer enters the borrower's email address in the RAVEN dashboard. One field. That triggers an email to the borrower with a secure verification link.
Step 2: Borrower verifies. The borrower opens the link on any device — phone, tablet, laptop. The verification takes two steps:
- Enter their SSN. This initiates identity verification, fraud screening, and watchlist checks through Socure's RiskOS platform. The borrower confirms their identity through a brief verification prompt. No document uploads. No selfie matching. Under 60 seconds.
- Connect their bank. The borrower authenticates their primary financial institution through Plaid Link — the same bank-connection interface used by Venmo, Cash App, and most major fintechs. They select their bank, enter their credentials, and authorize data sharing. Under 2 minutes.
What the Bank Gets Back
Behind those two borrower actions, RAVEN triggers verification requests across multiple providers simultaneously. The data comes back in a single, structured report organized by category.
Identity Verification
Source: Socure RiskOS
- Full KYC validation — name, SSN, date of birth, address confirmed against authoritative sources
- Fraud risk scoring — synthetic identity detection, identity manipulation flags, device risk signals
- Watchlist screening — OFAC SDN, global PEP lists, adverse media, law enforcement databases
- Risk scores with granular reason codes for every flag
Financial Data
Source: Plaid
- All connected accounts — checking, savings, investment, loan accounts across the borrower's linked institution
- Transaction history — categorized income deposits, recurring expenses, cash flow patterns
- Income verification — employer-deposited income identified and annualized, with source attribution
- Asset balances — current balances across all connected accounts
- Existing liabilities — credit cards, loans, and other obligations visible through the connected institution
Employment Verification
Source: Truework
- Current employer confirmed
- Employment dates verified
- Salary and compensation data (where available through employer payroll integrations)
- Verification delivered asynchronously — results flow into the report as they arrive
Property and Residence Data
Sources: Melissa, ATTOM
- Address verification and standardization through Melissa's Personator platform
- Ownership status — confirmed owner, renter, or other occupancy
- Property type and characteristics — single family, condo, multi-unit, square footage, lot size, year built
- Automated valuation model (AVM) estimate from ATTOM — comparable to what national fintechs use for instant property assessment
- Tax assessment data
- Move-in date and residency duration
Contact and Demographic Data
Source: Melissa, FullContact
- Verified phone numbers and email addresses
- Demographic indicators for fair lending analysis
- Social and professional profile data where publicly available
Cross-Source Reconciliation
Pulling data from multiple providers is useful. Cross-referencing it is where the value compounds.
RAVEN automatically compares data across sources. When Plaid-verified income aligns with Truework-confirmed salary, the confidence score for income increases. When the Socure-verified address matches the Melissa-confirmed residence with property ownership status, the identity confidence strengthens.
When sources disagree, RAVEN flags the discrepancy. If Plaid shows deposits from Employer A but Truework verifies employment at Employer B, that shows up as a discrepancy in the report — before the loan committee sees the file, not after. If the stated address does not match the verified residence, the loan officer knows immediately.
This is the difference between collecting data and verifying data. Traditional processes collect documents and trust that the borrower provided accurate information. RAVEN collects data from authoritative sources and tells the bank where the sources agree and where they do not.
Dashboard and Reporting
Loan officers access results through the RAVEN dashboard — a web interface that displays every verification in progress and every completed report.
Dashboard view. Each borrower shows a status card with module-by-module completion. Identity verified. Financials received. Employment pending. Property data complete. The loan officer sees at a glance which verifications are done and which are still in progress.
PDF reports. Every completed verification generates a print-ready PDF report suitable for the loan file. The report includes all verified data, source attribution, confidence scores, and any flagged discrepancies — formatted for the underwriter, the compliance reviewer, and the examiner.
Audit trail. Every action is logged with timestamps. When the borrower consented. When each data source responded. What data was returned. When the loan officer accessed the report. This is not just good practice — it is examiner-ready documentation that demonstrates the bank's verification process is consistent, sourced, and auditable.
What This Means for Compliance
Community banks under $100 million in assets spend 8.7% of noninterest expenses on compliance — three times the rate at banks over $1 billion (CSBS). A significant share of that cost goes to the manual, repetitive work of verifying borrowers against regulatory requirements.
RAVEN does not replace compliance judgment. It replaces compliance data collection. The KYC checks, the watchlist screening, the identity verification, the income confirmation — these are executed automatically, sourced from authoritative providers, and documented with a full audit trail. The compliance officer reviews results and makes decisions, rather than gathering data and entering it into systems.
Every verification runs through the same process. Every borrower is screened against the same watchlists. Every report contains the same structured data. This consistency is what examiners look for — evidence that the bank applies its verification standards uniformly, not selectively.
Integration and Pricing
RAVEN works as a standalone platform accessible through a web dashboard. No core system replacement. No six-month integration project. A loan officer can send their first verification link on day one.
For banks that want data flowing into their core banking system, RAVEN provides an API that integrates with Jack Henry, Fiserv, and FIS environments. The complete verification report is available as structured data through a REST API, ready for downstream systems.
Pricing is per-verification. No platform licensing fees. No six-figure annual commitments. The bank pays for what it uses. A bank running 50 verifications a month pays for 50 verifications. A bank running 500 pays for 500. The unit economics improve with volume, but there is no minimum to get started.
The Bottom Line
Community banks do not need to become technology companies to compete with fintechs on verification speed. They need to stop asking borrowers to produce documents that machines can retrieve faster and more accurately.
RAVEN turns borrower verification from a weeks-long document chase into a 5-minute digital interaction. The borrower gets the experience they expect from any modern financial service. The bank gets verified data from authoritative sources, cross-referenced and audit-ready. The loan officer gets hours back in their week.
One link. Complete verification. Community bank values, fintech speed.
Request early access at reportraven.tech