IFX Expands Working Groups to Include Loan Applications

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IFX Expands Working Groups to Include Loan Applications

Alexandria, VA,-The Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) Forum announced today the addition of a new working group focusing on loan applications. This group will address the key issues and opportunities that lenders and businesses face in supporting credit evaluation and funding in an e-commerce environment, and is led by Dennis Warnke of Credit Online, Inc. The intent is to facilitate the movement of all types of credit transactions back and forth between originators and credit grantors by defining new transaction types for the IFX message handler and defining Extensible Markup Language (XML) Document Type Definitions (DTDs) for data transport.

"The addition of a Loan Application Working Group opens the doors to faster transactions and better service," said IFX chairman Mark Tiggas of Wells Fargo. "IFX involvement in loan application standards will enable companies to significantly lower payment risk and decrease loan turnaround time from days to minutes."

The scope of the initial effort of this IFX working group will include automobile, mortgage and student lending. Subsequent efforts will focus on other loans and credit types, and documentation handling. By defining a standard set of semantic terms, the Loan Application Working Group will enable efficient communications related to credit evaluation and funding to those who implement the IFX standard. This working group will be responsible for defining enhancements to the established IFX Business Messages, as well as adding these changes to the IFX XML DTD for data transport.

Three years ago, the standard method for forwarding loan applications to credit grantors was to fax a handwritten application to a credit processing center. The application was entered at the processing center during normal or extended work hours with a decision returned via facsimile, hours or even days, later.

The emergence of the Internet as a distribution channel for goods and services is increasing the pressure on businesses to respond quickly to customer requests for goods and services. For high value goods, this often means either knowing the customer you are doing business with, or having the ability to evaluate the payment risk of prospective customers at the point of sale, or having the ability to transfer credit risk to an on-line lender. E-commerce is demanding that credit granting institutions receive credit applications electronically and respond within minutes, 24 hours per day, seven days a week. IFX standards using XML help make this kind of immediate customer service happen.

The IFX Forum, open for worldwide participation, was founded to provide a variety of benefits for financial services companies and their customers, and focuses on promoting the development and adoption of the IFX specification. The IFX Forum members develop open and interoperable specifications that meet the Financial Services Industry business requirements for serving consumer and corporate customers. The mission of the IFX Forum's open membership is to expedite the development and implementation of the IFX specification, which defines the business message format for the electronic exchange of data.

Companies and individuals who are interested in learning more about this IFX Loan Application XML initiative and the benefits of IFX membership, please visit http://www.ifxforum.org/, or contact Lee Waggoner at (703) 837 - 6153 or lwaggoner@disa.org.

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