Absolute Home Mortgage achieves 5x higher automated VOIE success with Argyle
A bold rollout transforms adoption and efficiency overnight
Absolute Home Mortgage believes getting a loan shouldn’t feel like a chore. Founded in Fairfield, New Jersey, and licensed in more than 25 states, this independent mortgage banker has spent over two decades proving that home financing can be equal parts professional and personal. The team’s promise is simple: help people reach their homeownership goals and make the journey a little happier along the way.
Challenge
That people-first philosophy also guides how Absolute approaches technology. When verifications started creating extra work for loan officers and friction for customers, CEO Matt VanFossen saw an opportunity to fix it.
Despite strong loan production, Absolute’s verification process wasn’t keeping pace. Adoption was low and costs were high — constrained by a manual, loan officer–driven verification process.
“I couldn’t get adoption above 10% with the process we had in place,” VanFossen says.
Like many lenders using high-cost legacy providers, Absolute had limited automation by design. Because each verification order carried a significant fee, the company waited to trigger requests until later in the loan process, after borrowers cleared other steps and were more likely to close.
The approach cut expenses on applications that never converted, but it also created a bottleneck. By the time loan officers were ready to order, the easiest option was a manual pull from The Work Number instead of a borrower-driven task.
The result was predictable: fewer automated verifications and higher per-loan costs. Absolute needed a way to move verification earlier in the process, expand automation, and do it cost-effectively enough that the occasional unconverted application wouldn’t matter.
Solution
Unlike static database providers that rely on purchased or outdated consumer data, Argyle connects directly to payroll and banking accounts to deliver consumer-permissioned, GSE-eligible income,employment, and asset verifications in real time.
When Argyle was integrated into The Big Point of Sale, Absolute’s point-of-sale system, he skipped the usual pilot phase entirely. Using ICE Mortgage Technology’s Encompass Partner Connect APIs, The Big Point of Sale created a trigger to automatically request verification of income and employment (VOIE) at the point of application. Customers receive a text message prompting them to authorize data sharing and securely log in to their payroll provider.
“The setup took me about half an hour,” VanFossen says. “We just flipped the switch company-wide and trusted Argyle to perform.”
That confidence paid off. Within three months, engagement soared. 100% of customers opened the link, 92% searched for their employer or payroll provider, 74% found a match, 63% submitted credentials and nearly half—48%—successfully synced their payroll data.
“By not driving the experience through a portal within a portal and just using what’s already in the customer’s hand, we’re getting an incredibly high attachment rate,” VanFossen says.
Outcome
- 5X higher automated verification success
By embedding Argyle into The Big Point of Sale, Absolute raised its automated verification completion rate from 10% to 48% in just weeks.
“Once we took verification straight to the customer, it was like flipping a light switch,” VanFossen says. “Within six days, executives were asking, ‘Where’s all this new order volume coming from?’”
- Lower costs, higher efficiency
By reducing Absolute’s reliance on manual verification and expensive legacy services, Argyle has helped the company free up loan processing capacity while saving money.
“Argyle costs less than one processor’s annual salary and gives the processing team the capacity to collect W-2s and pay stubs for half of our loan volume,” VanFossen explains. “When you look at it that way, Argyle’s cost is modest for what it delivers.”
- Greater loan quality and R&W relief
As an independent mortgage bank that sells most of its loans on the secondary market, maximizing loan quality and minimizing repurchase risk is essential for Absolute. Argyle helps the lender achieve fewer buybacks, cleaner data, and stronger investor confidence as an authorized verification provider for Fannie Mae’s Desktop Underwriter® validation service and Freddie Mac’s Loan Product Advisor® asset and income modeler (AIM).
“What really makes the Argyle pay for itself is that nearly half our loans hit underwriting with pay stubs and W-2s already synced through Fannie Mae’s Day 1 Certainty,” VanFossen says.
With Argyle, Absolute turned a long-standing operational bottleneck into a competitive advantage. Looking ahead, VanFossen sees even greater potential for automation.
“We’re successfully converting VOIE 48% of the time now, but I want to get to 75%,” VanFossen says.
“That’s the goal: keep pushing efficiency and let the technology do the work.”
