Key Results
The problem
One step in the loan application asked homeowners:
“Do you have any mortgages or liens on your home?”
Many applicants thought of a lien as something negative, like a tax lien, and didn’t realize a mortgage is also a lien. About 20% of applicants who had a mortgage answered the question wrong.
A wrong answer skipped the automated request for mortgage documents. Sales then had to step in by hand, loan estimates were delayed, and the applicant ran into extra back and forth.
What we tested
Test 1: Reword the question. We changed the copy to explain that a mortgage counts as a lien. More people got confused, and errors went up.
Test 2: Change the flow. We dropped the yes/no question and asked for the outstanding mortgage balance instead, with an “I don’t have a mortgage” checkbox. If someone entered a balance, the next page listed lien types and asked them to select any that applied. Incorrect answers fell from 20% to 5%.
Impact
- Fewer applications needed a salesperson to fill in missing mortgage information.
- Loan estimates were more accurate because the mortgage data was there from the start.
- More applications moved through the automated workflow without manual review.
What I learned
- Asking for a number people know worked better than explaining a term they didn’t.
- A small change in how data is collected can remove a lot of manual work later, with no big engineering project.
- Testing beat our first instinct. The obvious fix, clearer wording, made things worse.