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In the mid 1990’s, the mortgage industry saw the credit score and its predictive power to assess a borrower’s ability to repay a mortgage step into the limelight as one of the most indicative factors for loan approval. After conducting statistical test after statistical test, Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie, the 3 big lending institutions, mandated that the credit score should be used in conjunction with manual underwriting to assess loan approval. Not too long after, automated underwriting systems (AUS) were developed that expedited and streamlined the underwriting process even further for lenders. A loan officer today simply inputs a borrower’s key information into the preferred underwriting automatic engine, such as his/her credit score, income, amount being borrowed, cash reserves, employment and housing history, and the value of the property. A response is returned by the underwriting engine recommending approval or denial for the loan.

If your loan receives a denial from an AUS, the buck doesn’t necessarily stop there. Life happens to people, and oftentimes it’s going to take a real live person understanding the nuances of a file to make an underwriting decision. That’s when your lender may suggest submitting your file to underwriting for a manual review. After all, not everything in life can be automatic, right?

A perfect scenario for a manually underwritten file would be someone who has no credit scores. No credit scores? Yes, it is possible. I’ve had customers who, being old school and always having paid for everything in cash, had never established traditional credit lines that reported to credit reporting bureaus. In a case such as this one, I had to submit non-traditional lines of credit to underwriting, something a machine can’t assess. This means I had my customer bring in bills he had paid on time for the past year to create a credit history. Typical ones used are car insurance, utility bills, cell phone bills and cable bills. You can expect to have to provide 3-4 different trade lines if you haven’t established a traditional credit history and score.

“The most typical reason we see a file submitted to us for manual underwriting is for either no credit score or an error reported on a credit report,” reflects Patricia Haynes, onsite Government Underwriter at Mortgage Investors Group. “For instance a judgement that doesn’t really belong to the borrower. Maybe it’s really Dad’s judgement reflected on the son’s report because Junior and Dad have the same name. That’s when I can overwrite an AUS decision because I have the documentation to support my decision to do so in front of me.”

Another very common reason to submit a loan for a manual underwrite is when your customer’s credit score is below 620 and gets an AUS denial. If this is the case with your loan, be prepared to provide more than average documentation about your credit history, as well as written explanations as to why your credit score has suffered recently. Maybe two years ago you had a financial meltdown due to a medical illness, but in the last twelve months, you can prove you are back on your game and have been repaying debt. However, your credit scores haven’t exactly caught up with your actions. An underwriter is going to piece together the different aspects of your file and see if it makes sense. Your home lender should be able to review your file and guide you as to what documentation an underwriter will want from you to grant you loan approval.

Naturally, if your credit score is really low and you have very little explanation for your state of credit affairs other than you failed to pay your bills on time, don’t hold your breath for loan approval. An underwriter can see through smoke and mirrors. After looking at files as long as they have, they can basically sniff out a loan that has merit from the ones that are too risky.

So, even as our world gets more and more automated every day, it’s nice to know that you can’t replace genuine common sense, even in the mortgage industry. And it’s nice to know that you can plead your case for credit worthiness to a real live human being.

The HTC Touch Pro2 is one of the latest touchscreen phones from HTC, it was released in 2009 in the UK and has quickly become one of the most popular mobile phones for business users. 

HTC may not be one of the best known smartphone manufacturers but this business mobile phone can certainly compete with the likes of RIM’s Blackberry phones as well as the i-Phone from Apple.

The last few Windows Mobile phones from HTC have basically been updates of its main models – the style-conscious Diamond2 and now the business mobile phone behemoth – HTC Touch Pro2 with its slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

HTC, a Chinese brand have a strong past record and have proven themselves as leaders in innovation with mobile phones for business and individual users - check out their credentials here.

The HTC Touch Pro2 is a fair bit bigger than the Diamond2 and a little heavier to boot – 116×59x17mm and 179g, but it does have a bigger and better tilting touch screen as well as an improved interface as a good justification, it also has a new conference call facility named ‘Straight Talk’.

It is not a cheap phone by any means – you will be paying top end prices for this mobile but it does deliver on almost every level – the main downfall being the quality of the 3.2 megapixel camera.

But don’t be put off by the size – unless you are a skinny jeans kind o’ guy/girl, it’s a stylish and flashy mobile phone.

The front of the phone is exceptionally sleek with just four hard keys that raise above the screen level that sit along the bottom of the screen: call start and stop/home, back and Windows.

The sides are not overloaded with buttons – just a volume switch, reset slot and stylus on the right, power button on top and USB 2.0 power/headphone socket on the bottom. The 3.2 megapixel camera lens is situated on the back of the phone, and alongside this sit the microphone and the large Straight Talk speaker for conference calls, as well as a mute button.

The HTC Touch Pro2’s has a slide out QWERTY keyboard on the left of the phone. There are 5 rows of keys which are not disimilar to a standard computer keyboard. The keys on the keyboard are little rounded hardened bits of rubber that are backlit and are well spaced enough for fast accurate typing – the extra size suddenly seems worth it – if you are a heavy business user of your phone then this will be a big plus.

The Touch Pro2’s screen tilts so you can put the phone on a desk and type on the keyboard – which is a nice touch as it tilts to about 45 degrees. There is also an onscreen keyboard so if you prefer this then it is there but we found that the QWERTY was a lot easier and faster so little need for the touch screen.

The interface is well laid out too, with large numbers, and can predict phone numbers that you have previously used after you have typed the first few digits which can be a handy time saver. It has been specifically designed with conference calls in mind and it’s easy to set up multi-party calls.

You just need to register for this service with your network before you can use it. You just set the call up, and then put the phone face down on a desk so that the big, loud, noise-cancelling Straight Talk speaker is visible.

On the back there is also a useful mute button with a glowing colour indicator to show whether or not it is in use. The HTC Touch Pro2’s has a 3.6-inch with a resolution of 480×800 pixels. It’s got a bright, sharp and clear picture, and it also has all of the Windows Mobile options for dimming and limiting backlight to save on battery life.

You can also rotate the screen round to show in landscape.

The level of sensitivity of the keys is just about right – we didn’t have any problems with mistaken presses or missed swipes on scrolls. The sensitivity cannot be adjusted but it is set well so you should find this not a problem. HTC are constantly improving the TouchFLO 3D interface, on top on the Windows 6.1 Professional operating system.

You can stroke across the entire home screen to access each of the different functions. If you press the start button then you can bring up all of your shortcuts as well as 30 different apps.

It also has a scrolling menu which works similarly to that of the i-phone with large icons which can be easily accessed with the thumb – so not much need for the little stylus. The phone was pretty good on the web with a good sized screen for viewing sites.

It comes preloaded with Opera, but you can also use IE, and access is fast via Wi-Fi or HSDPA 3G link (with up to 7.2Mbps download).

The accelerometer switches the screen to landscape mode when you turn the phone on its side. This also happens when you open up the QWERTY keyboard. You can tap the screen twice for a zoom on web pages and can easily scroll around with your finger and switch sites easily. Web pages are rendered extremely well – the majority of sites appeared perfectly.

There is an RSS hub to keep you up to date as well as a YouTube app. The camera is not a great one; if used in good light then the quality is OK but if used indoors with artificial light then it is not the best. It has autofocus, a 2x digital zoom, some colour effects, a panorama setting, ten-second timer and touch screen focus.

If you need a quality camera for business mobile use then this will probably be a killer for the Touch Pro2 but for light users it will just about do. The HTC Touch Pro2 is perfect for Watching video.

The screen is only 0.2in smaller than the Touch HD, but has the same pixel resolution and it is difficult to spot any difference in quality. You can watch a wide range of video and media formats; WMV, ASF, MP4, 3GP, 3G2, M4V, AVI You can use Windows Media Player for music, and there’s a ten-band graphic equaliser with 21 presets to help you get the sound you want. It supports a good range of formats: AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, QCP, MP3, WMA, WAV, MIDI, M4A.

There is no FM radio but the sound on the music player is pretty good – supplied headphones are not bad but probably not as good as the ones with the i-phone. We found that for business mobile phone users to get your email set up is very easy – you simply need your email address and password. The HTC Touch Pro2 has quad-band GSM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (with stereo A2DP) and USB 2.0, as well as a TV out facility.

For business mobile phone users who are regularly out of the office for meetings – the Touch Pro2 comes with GPS and Google Maps, both of which work very well. There’s no sat nav included but you can pay for inclusion but will be lucky to find this for less than the £60 cost through the i-phone app. Windows Office and Adobe Reader are pre-installed, this means that you can create and view Word, Excel and OneNote docs, as well as view PowerPoint docs and PDFs. But… there’s also JETCET Presentation, which allows you to edit PowerPoint docs.

For business users there is also instant messaging with Windows Live Messenger, some Java games, including Teeter, stock quotes, weather updates and a calendar. The HTC Touch Pro2 has 512MB of memory with 288MB of RAM, and you can add up to 16GB with a microSD card.

The battery should give you 510 minutes of talk time (GSM) and up to 750 hours of standby according to HTC but we found that we gor just over 2 days with typical business use of all functions.

All round this is a great mobile phone for the business user – it has really taken a step up from the diamond2 which is saying something. This is a company to watch!

If you are keen to buy this mobile phone then there are some great deals available through our site – at time of writing the prices started at £25/month based on 1 handset so depending on your size you may be able to barter down from this price.