Introduction to iLAD
September 6, 2019
This is the first in a series of articles about the new Industry Loan Application Dataset (iLAD) specification which was released by MISMO (Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization). This article provides an overview of the iLAD Specification, its purpose and its components. The second article goes into more detail on the specification worksheet and the third article delves into the navigating the iLAD Wrapper / MISMO XML Schema files.
What is iLAD?
On September 4th 2019, the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO®) released a new data specification, Industry Loan Application Dataset (iLAD), for public comment. iLAD is a supplemental specification to the Fannie Mae® / Freddie Mac® specification - Uniform Loan Application Dataset (ULAD). Before covering the iLAD specification in more detail, we will give a brief background on the ULAD specification. If you’ re new to working with data specifications, they are an alphabet stew. In this article alone we will be exploring the acronym - lands of MISMO, ULAD, URLA, AUS, iLAD, DU, LPA.
ULAD Background
The“ ULAD” specification is the dataset that contains the data used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the new“ URLA” (Uniform Residential Loan Application) form. The data collected on the loan application is used to make a loan underwriting decision. The ULAD data will eventually become the primary method of submitting the loan application data that is used in common by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In addition, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have additional supplemental information that they each require for their individual Automated Underwriting Systems (AUS). The additional data required by Fannie Mae’ s AUS, is published in their Desktop Underwriter (DU) Specification V1.7. The additional data required by Freddie Mac’ s AUS is published in their Loan Product Advisor (LPA) Request Specification V5.0.05.
Why was iLAD Needed?
For years, mortgage industry vendors have been using the Fannie Mae 1003 V3.2 Flat File as a de - facto industry standard for exchange of data. This legacy Fannie Mae data format contains some data that is not included in the ULAD, DU and LPA data sets, but it is no longer being updated or supported by Fannie Mae. At the MISMO meetings in January of 2019, a group of loan origination service vendors proposed developing a data specification that included the URLA, DU, LPA data sets, PLUS the Fannie Mae 1003 V3.2 Flat File data that is shared among the mortgage industry vendors. The resulting dataset is known as iLAD and is formatted using the MISMO V3.4.0 specification, which is the same MISMO version used for the ULAD, DU and LPA specifications.
Access to the iLAD 1.0.0 Specification
MISMO has setup a web page for the Industry Loan Application Dataset (iLAD). This web page provides links to download the iLAD specification documents as well as the press release announcement.
iLAD Version 1 Components
Version 1 of the iLAD specification is a super set of several datasets and specifications as shown in the diagram below. More detail about each iLAD component is listed below the diagram.
iLAD Version 1 Components
- ULAD: The Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac ULAD v1.7 specification is the core component of iLAD. It contains the bulk of the data elements in iLAD. ULAD primarily uses MISMO V3.4.0 data elements. Sixteen (16) of the data elements needed for ULAD were not part of the MISMO V3.4.0 data model and have been added as MISMO“ extensions” and are included in the iLAD specification.
- DU: The Fannie Mae Desktop Underwriter (DU) v1.7 specification contains the elements of ULAD that DU uses, plus additional data elements from the MISMO v3.4.0 data model. Nine (9) of the DU data elements that were not already part of MISMO v3.4.0 have been added as MISMO“ extensions” and are included in the iLAD specification.
- LPA: The Freddie Mac Loan Product Advisor (LPA) Request v5.0.05 specification contains the elements of ULAD that LPA uses plus additional data elements from the MISMO v3.4.0 data model. Nine (9) of the LPA data elements were not already part of MISMO v3.4.0 and have been added as MISMO“ extensions” and are included in the iLAD specification.
- Fannie Mae 3.2 Flat File: The legacy Fannie Mae DU 3.2 Flat File contains some data elements that are commonly used in data exchanges among mortgage industry service vendors, but were not part of the ULAD, DU or LPA specifications. Many of these data elements were already included in the MISMO v3.4.0 data model. Three (3) of these data elements were not part of MISMO v3.4.0 and were added as MISMO“ extensions” to the iLAD specification.
iLAD Future Versions
Version 1 of the iLAD specification contains only the data elements that were part of the ULAD, DU, LPA, and Fannie Mae 3.2 Flat File. This was done so that Version 1 could be available to mortgage industry service vendors in a timely manner.
MISMO is already beginning to work on the next release of iLAD, which will contain supplemental data that is commonly used among mortgage industry service providers and lenders. Examples of data that may be included in the next release of the iLAD specification could include data that is currently collected in a paper format, or a sent in a proprietary (non-MISMO) data format, or data that is currently entered manually through a web browser. This may include some government agency data such as USDA Rural Housing, VA, FHA or Ginnie Mae mortgage data.
To participate in this effort, look for more information on the MISMO website: www.mismo.org. MISMO has set up a“ Loan Application Data Exchange Development Workgroup”, which is a group of industry volunteers from the Loan Origination System vendors, document preparation vendors, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, lenders, mortgage insurance companies and other service vendors. To find out more about participating in this development workgroup click this link.
Written by
Mike Bixby
Mike Bixby is the president of Bixby Consulting Inc. which has been providing data integration support to the mortgage industry for over twenty years. Mike was one of the founding members of MISMO and has served on MISMO's Residential Governance Committee, MISMO's Board of Directors and was the Chair of MISMO's Credit Reporting Workgroup from 2000– 2010. Mike is also the Chair of MISMO's Information Management team, which reviews and approves all changes to the MISMO Reference Model, Logical Data Dictionary, Implementation Guides, and other MISMO products. Mike Bixby is also a partner in GridML LLC, which developed the Grid-ML XML Schema Viewer
