AQI: Appraisal Quality Index
AXIS is proud to be part of the team behind the revolutionary appraisal QC software system, AQM (Appraisal Quality Management). Recently announced as a Top Innovation of the year from the Progress in Lending Association, we are honored with the industry's reception.
For an in depth look at AQM, see our AQM white paper. It contains a brief regulatory overview concerning appraisal quality control and why it matters.
About AQM
AXIS drew from its years of meticulous Quality Control expertise to develop an award winning solution for a compliant and powerful appraisal quality control process. With our industry-leading partners a la mode and MasterServ Financial, AQM is your one-stop-shopping to avoid buy-backs, reduce time in underwriting, and make risky lending decisions with enhanced confidence.
AQM transforms an outdated process from dangerous and inconsistent, to efficient and consistent through an online system. Plus, a full audit trail of every step of the process is captured, from the first receipt of the appraisal report, to the most powerful quality control engine results, to the process of requesting and receiving revisions from the appraiser. AQM then automatically provides an Appraisal Quality Index (AQI) report, which professionally presents the non-curable items, along with additional recommendations and information from the AMC.
The AQI provides an overall report score to aid in consistent handling, as well as individual scores and in-depth information regarding five risk indices: Completeness, Accuracy, Value, Property, and Market. For compliance and highest quality valuations, AQM is an essential system that simultaneously streamlines and improves workflow, while also providing proof of due diligence.
Common Uses for AQM
- Streamline the process of checking appraisals for completeness and UAD/UCDP compliance
- Route complicated assignments to experienced underwriters, and simpler appraisals to newer staff
- Capture and push required edits to the appraiser, with pre-written instructions for faster turn and consistency
- Verify the appraisal is checked against outside data sources such as the tax records, purchase contract, and HOA certificate
- Verify that all appraisals (regardless of the AMC or the appraiser) are evaluated consistently
- Identify key issues for underwriting
- Provide documented proof that the appraisal was validated and incurable items were identified and included with the loan file
- Refute buy back claims based on the documented findings of the appraisal QC process
- Eliminate need for costly valuation validation reports when the property or loan doesn't warrant them
- Reduce or eliminate revision requests from underwriting
- Order additional valuation products when warranted, based on the findings of the AQI report
How it Works
A step-by-step example of how AQM is used:
- Appraisal is delivered by the appraiser to the AMC in MISMO XML format and is added to the AQM system.
- AQM scrubs the appraisal in a rules engine that checks for UAD compliance, consistency in the appraisal, and any possible adverse items. Rules are specific to transaction type (purchase, refinance, FHA). Rules also validate the information provided to the appraiser at the time the appraisal was ordered such as lender name, address, borrower name, and transaction type.
- The results are returned to the AMC in a QC interface. Failed rules display, along with rules that require manual validation. The manual validation could include checking the appraisal narrative for comments, as well as verifying third party data sources such as assessor records, contracts, and agreements.
- Once the analysis is complete, if there are revisions, these are automatically generated based on the review, and the revision text is presented to the QC staff prior to sending to the appraiser. Information can be added or removed from the revision request.
Revisions from the appraiser are returned. The AMC QC staff examines all revisions and decides which rules should now be marked as Passed and which rules are not curable and should be communicated to the lender.
- The AMC will most likely run UCDP now and obtain the required Submission Summary Report documents.
- The AMC QC staff sends a request to calculate the final results and return the AQI report.
- The AQI report is returned to the AMC for review.
- The completed appraisal, UCDP documents, and AQI report are sent to the lender.
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