The Influence of Bureau Scores, Customized Scores and Judgmental Review on the Bank Underwriting Decision-Making Process

Document Type

Article

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Published in the Journal of Real Estate Research, volume 24 issue 2, 2002. Bryant users may access this article here.

Publisher

American Real Estate Society

Abstract

In recent years commercial banks have moved toward automated forms of underwriting. This study employs unique bank loan-level data from a scoring lender to determine whether automated underwriting exhibits a potential "disparate impact" across income strata. The findings indicate that strict application of this custom scoring model leads to higher denial rates for low- to moderate-income borrowers when compared with both a naive judgmental system and a bureau scoring approach. These results suggest that financial regulators should focus more resources on the evaluation and study of customized scoring models.

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