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My spouse and I closed on a house in July 2014. I received a letter in the mail last Friday addressed to me from one of my retirement plans that said basically this:
"Dear Sue Smith (NOT my name):
Thank you for your inquiry. Here is some information on our plans.
We verify that the statement you have provided is accurate and reflects our records.
Thank you,
Blah Blah Financial Joint
cc: jbrv (me)"
I was scared to death and wondering exactly who the heck Sue Smith was and why she was asking about my retirement plans. So, first thing Monday morning I called the company that my plan is through and asked what the letter was regarding. The CSR said "It's someone on behalf of your mortgage company, just checking in to make sure the info they had on you was correct." FOUR MONTHS after we closed? Weird.
I called my financial planner, and asked him if he could look into my other accounts that he manages for me to see if anyone has asked about them. He was extremely concerned and said it sounded really shady. He got back with me later in the day and said that no one had sent any communications asking for information from those accounts, so it seems like it's just that one account at this point.
Any idea why they'd be asking for verification of one retirement account four months after closing? Not that I have anything to hide, I just find it odd that they are looking at one random account so long afterward. We did list them as assets on the mortgage app, but didn't pull out any money from any of our retirement/investment funds to pay for anything regarding the house, so this strikes me as odd.
I'd call your mortgage company and 1) make sure they are the ones who actually requested the info and 2) ask them why. If you don't get reassuring answers to both of those questions, then you can figure out how to proceed.
At closing, you signed something that gives them permission to reconfirm all the information you provided to them. This goes to the company who bought the loan also, if it was sold. Go through your papers. You'll see you gave them advanced notice to reconfirm everything. If you provided it once, they're allowed to ask for it again. If you never provided the information, they are not allowed to ask for it. For example, if you provided 2012 & 2013 tax returns, they cannot ask you for any other tax returns except those two years.
Could be a delayed response as well. I would ask them to fax you the original request for information. Also did you call the financial company themselves?
I took the above suggestion and called the mortgage company, and they said that - while they did not directly request the info - they do contract out some "post-closing quality control services" on randomly selected loans. The CSR said that these QC checks are not done to investigate the applicant any further, but rather are done to investigate the loan origination practices in order to pinpoint weaknesses and trends that banks can improve upon.
So I asked: if these QC checks aren't done to investigate the applicant, when why re-verify the accuracy of my account info? The CSR couldn't tell me any answer for that.
I know we signed the auth form to allow them to access this info, but our LO was like "Oh, no one ever uses this, it's just something we have to have you sign just in case!", so I was surprised to hear that someone was actually using it. They didn't look into any other accounts, and out of curiosity, I just checked online to see if they tried re-verifying my employment info - my employer strictly uses an online system (there was no recent inquiry; in fact, no one even used the original access code that I had generated when we applied for the loan, so I guess no one checked my employment status at all, through the whole entire loan process!). I haven't received any credit inquiries or anything, so it must have just been something about that account that made them re-check the validity of it. Which bothers me, and I wish I knew why, but since it seems like I'm not being heavily investigated or anything, I'm just going to let it go.
It just seems odd to check facts AFTER closing, when the loan has already been sold and we've made multiple mortgage payments to the lender. I thought they did all the verifying during the underwriting process? Seems easier to do it before approving a loan rather than backtracking!!!
I took the above suggestion and called the mortgage company, and they said that - while they did not directly request the info - they do contract out some "post-closing quality control services" on randomly selected loans. The CSR said that these QC checks are not done to investigate the applicant any further, but rather are done to investigate the loan origination practices in order to pinpoint weaknesses and trends that banks can improve upon.
So I asked: if these QC checks aren't done to investigate the applicant, when why re-verify the accuracy of my account info? The CSR couldn't tell me any answer for that.
I know we signed the auth form to allow them to access this info, but our LO was like "Oh, no one ever uses this, it's just something we have to have you sign just in case!", so I was surprised to hear that someone was actually using it. They didn't look into any other accounts, and out of curiosity, I just checked online to see if they tried re-verifying my employment info - my employer strictly uses an online system (there was no recent inquiry; in fact, no one even used the original access code that I had generated when we applied for the loan, so I guess no one checked my employment status at all, through the whole entire loan process!). I haven't received any credit inquiries or anything, so it must have just been something about that account that made them re-check the validity of it. Which bothers me, and I wish I knew why, but since it seems like I'm not being heavily investigated or anything, I'm just going to let it go.
It just seems odd to check facts AFTER closing, when the loan has already been sold and we've made multiple mortgage payments to the lender. I thought they did all the verifying during the underwriting process? Seems easier to do it before approving a loan rather than backtracking!!!
Yes that is odd! We had our loan checked by Quality Control (a dept within the finance company) that did ask to verify certain documents. Asked me several questions etc. At first I was kind of alarmed as it sounded like my finance company was committing fraud by the likes of the questions. But it was just them re-checking everything. I was kind of comforted by it as after reading about all the issues within the mortgage industry the last several years, this is being done to ensure it doesn't happen again. At least with the specific company I used.
It was an audit of your loan application file after closing, period.
You gave them permission, and that is what they did. Nothing to be concerned about.
It was just a little creepy to get the letter, is all....and it bothers me that they felt like they had to recheck something, but I guess that's just me (even though I'm sure there's a method to it).
Honestly, I had no idea that mortgage apps were audited after-the-fact - that I thought that all the fact-checking happened before closing, when they require all the mountains of docs. Maybe it does, and this is a way of fact-checking the fact-checkers?
When I Google "Post-closing audit" I find a LOT of companies that offer this service but very little-to-basically-no info from people who have experienced one, so it's either very rare (lucky us!), or it happens more often and people just don't find out about it (which I wouldn't have, had I not been cc'ed on the response to the inquiry into my account).
It just seems odd to check facts AFTER closing, when the loan has already been sold and we've made multiple mortgage payments to the lender. I thought they did all the verifying during the underwriting process? Seems easier to do it before approving a loan rather than backtracking!!!
They were not checking on you as others have said. It's not about you. Think of it as quality control if that helps. A company is confirming that the mortgage company is complying with particular standards, etc. At any given time, lenders must audit a percentage of all loans.
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