Your Customer’s Next Steps

Received Offers

Congratulations. Just knowing that your customer applied to check for pre-qualified offers, is a great buying signal!

Your Customer’s Next Steps

Select an Offer: Once the customer receives an offer(s) and wants to proceed, they will follow the steps to select the offer and complete the remaining application with the chosen lender

If they don’t select the offer online, the offers are good for 21 days and the customer can always retrieve their offers by going to their email from Acorn Finance, or by going to the Acorn Finance website: https://staging.acornfinance.dev/access-offers/#/

Finalize Application: Each lender is slightly different and requirements can also be dependent on the loan size, employment status, etc. Information requested can include employer information, confirmation of the customer’s income, and identification.

Authorize Hard Credit Inquiry: Each will also ask for the customer’s authorization to do a hard credit inquiry in order to underwrite your loan request and determine final approval.

Customer Receives Funds: Once the customer receives final approval, the lender will gather their bank account details to direct deposit the loan proceeds into the customer’s bank account (or disperse via debit or credit card to the customer. if that option is available)

Pays Contractor (You): Once your customer receives the funds from the lender, they can pay for their project according to the terms of your agreement. This process mirrors anything that would happen with someone paying out of pocket (aka a cash buyer).

Step by Step Instructions:

It’s a seamless experience for the customer. The customer sees their offers online and they are prompted to select an offer. Once they select the offer they will see the next steps and additional questions from the lender.

Credit Profile, Income and Debt Ratio:

Each customer’s credit profile, income and debt can affect the offers they receive. Click Factors That May Affect Pre-qualified Offers.

Customer unhappy with their offers:

If the customer doesn’t like their offers, rates, or terms it’s always best to focus the customer on the simplicity of the process and the easy, no harm – no foul impact of checking their offers with Acorn Finance. Reasons for the customer’s offers can really vary depending on a number of factors. Keep in mind the following can impact the offers a customer receives (link to Lender Criteria below)

– No Credit Impact: Remind them that checking for offers with Acorn is a smart, customer-friendly way to check their options with no-credit impact. If they didn’t like their offers, they can always pay you via a different method.

– Errors?: It’s always a good idea to check for common errors that could have prevented them from seeing the most offers (link to errors section on no offers)

– Lenders Decide: Acorn Finance has no impact on lenders’ decision-making. Offers, rates, and terms are the sole decisions made by lenders based on their own criteria along with information they gather from the application including credit score, income, and debt to income ratio.

– Re-apply: Customers are always welcome to re-apply if they want to request a different amount. Some customers are interested in seeing if they qualify for more than originally requested, or, they want to see if they can get a lower payment or interest rate if they ask for a lower amount or add a co-borrower.

– Co-borrower: You can suggest they add a co-borrower to their application to improve the chances of getting an offer. See tips for adding a co-borrower

– Alternate Payment Options: If re-applying doesn’t make sense, tell the customer the options you have for accepting other forms of payment

Email communications: Typically the lender does not contact the customer by phone. They will request additional information thru email and sometimes in the online account that they may ask the customer to create. They will provide the customer with a customer service phone number in case the customer has questions or needs to get in touch with them.

Your Next Steps

The offers email notification tells you the customer actually applied with us, the amount they requested and if they received offers or not. Customer contact details are provided to help you easily reconnect with your customer.

We know from user feedback that this information is most critical to your sales process and acts as an early indicator of the customer interest. Addition steps to consider:

Check-in with the Customer: Customers always want to know what the next steps are, so as much as possible, take control of the conversation and make sure the customer knows what to do whether or not they take an offer with Acorn. Outline the next steps to move forward with their project and to complete your sales process.

Acorn Next Steps: If the customer shares that they are going to move forward with an offer, you can make sure they are aware of the next steps with the Acorn Finance application process. In order to proceed with one of their pre-qualified offers, the customer needs to actually select an offer and then complete the application process with the lender to move forward with the loan offer. To get back to their offers, customers can go to Already Applied? Check Your Offers and enter their email and last 4 digits of the SSN#

Authorize Hard Credit Inquiry: Each will also ask for the customer’s authorization to do a hard credit inquiry in order to underwrite your loan request and determine final approval.

Close the Sale: We hear from top users that it’s best to be prepared to close the sale regardless of how the customer responds to their offers. Because they applied to check for offers with Acorn, you know the customer is interested, and you know if they received payment options or not. Use this information to help consult the customer on how to move forward with the project.

Keep in mind that each customer will evaluate their offers based on their own situation and experience. Each customer’s offers are different and highly personalized, so it is important to keep that in mind that as you reconnect with the customer.

Customer selected an offer or plans to select an offer:

– Great. Advise the customer to make sure they finalize with the lender. To finish the process they need to select an offer (either online, thru their email from Acorn Finance, or by visiting Access My Offers to select an offer and then complete the lender application process and authorization for the hard credit pull before final approval is given.

– Once final approval is given and the funds are released to the customer they can pay you. This process typically takes 1-2 business days for an unsecured loan. For home equity options it may take 2 weeks. Set a time to check-in with the customer to finalize payment.

FUNDED LOANS

Congratulations. Your customer has finished the application process and has received the funds.

Who has the money? The customer:

The lender will have sent the money directly to the customer.
Typically the funds are deposited directly into the customer’s bank account at this point.
Some lenders may offer an additional option to allow the customer to receive the funds by digital debit or credit card.

Your Customer’s Next Steps

You should reach out: You should follow up with the customer to finalize the arrangement you discussed to receive payment accordingly.

Your Next Steps

Tell the customer how to pay you for the project. Once the customer has the funds, you can share the options you have for accepting their payment. If you prefer cash or check, let the customer know and how to deliver the payment to you.
Outline Next Steps: Customers always want to know what the next steps with you are, so as much as possible, take control of the conversation and make sure the customer knows what to do and what you will do next

While this is not typical for customers who use Acorn Finance, on occasion, this can happen. If the customer communicates that they have changed their mind, and decided not to do their project or possibly considering a competitor, you should approach this like you would with any cash customer.

What can you Learn? Obviously, be respectful, however, it’s a perfect opportunity to find out what’s driving this change of heart. Is it the customer’s financial situation, is it something about your sales process or prices? Is a competitor doing something special? Or is there something else you have not considered?
What Is the Deal Worth to You? What levers can You Pull? Unless you have a legally binding agreement with the customer to invoke, you will need your sales skills here. Just like with a cash customer, you will want to evaluate the value of the project to you and be prepared to use whatever levers you have to pull, like offers and incentives you keep in your back pocket.
Keep in mind that with Acorn Finance’s free solution, you don’t pay any fees, so you have all your tools and levers available without the impact of additional cost or fees of the financing solutions when dealing with the customer to close the sale.

No Offers

If your customer applied and didn’t receive any pre-qualified offer, most often it is based on their current credit profile and their annual income entered on the application. Occasionally it can be due to other reasons. Please see below for more information.

Your Customer’s Next Steps

The customer doesn’t need to take any action, however, they are welcome to re-apply if they think they made an error on the application. See common application errors. Or to improve their ability to receive an offer they can also reapply with a co-borrow, or for a different requested amount.

Fix Errors and Re-apply: Customers are welcome to re-apply if they think they might have entered the wrong information or previously put a freeze on their credit report and forgot.
Re-apply for a Different Amount: They can also re-apply for a different amount.
Re-apply with a co-borrower: You can suggest they add a co-borrower to their application to improve the chances of getting an offer. See tips for adding a co-borrower
Alternate Payment Options: If reapplying doesn’t make sense, tell the customer the options you have for accepting other forms of payment

Your Next Steps

Tell the customer how to pay you for the project. Once the customer has the funds, you can share the options you have for accepting their payment. If you prefer cash or check, let the customer know and how to deliver the payment to you.
Outline Next Steps: Customers always want to know what the next steps with you are, so as much as possible, take control of the conversation and make sure the customer knows what to do and what you will do next

It’s always helpful to focus the conversation on the benefit of using Acorn Finance, and that there is no impact on the customer’s credit score by checking for pre-qualified offers.

No Credit Impact: Remind them that checking for offers with Acorn is a smart, credit-friendly way to check their options with no-credit impact. No offers mean they couldn’t be pre-qualified with Acorn’s lenders and they can always pay you via a different method.
Errors? It’s always a good idea to check for common errors that could have prevented them from seeing any offers (see below)
Lenders Decide: Decisions to pre-qualify and approve loan requests are made by lenders based on their own criteria along with information they gather from the application including credit score, income, and debt-to-income ratio. Acorn Finance has no impact on their decision-making.
Notification: Let customers know that if they were not pre-qualified for any offers, Acorn Finance will immediately notify them of the decision in the application flow and via a secure message. Please have customers refer to the secure message that they received from Acorn Finance for more information about the decision.

FACTORS THAT MAY AFFECT PRE-QUALIFIED OFFERS

The following examples are informational only and are not specific to any customer.

Incorrect Information on the Application

A few common application errors include:

Credit Bureau Freeze: Occasionally, customers forget that they have placed a freeze on their credit bureau for information security purposes. If the customer has not removed the freeze before applying, we are unable to do a soft-pull credit inquiry and as a result the customer will not receive offers. Customers can contact their credit bureau to unfreeze and re-apply.

Social Security Number: If the customer made an error with the social security number, the soft credit pull will not be successful and would result in no offers.

Address: Customers are asked to provide their home address. If they don’t put the correct address for the property that would show up on a credit report, then they may not be able to be properly evaluated by the lenders.

Income: If the customer put a number in for their income that was not an annual income (for example – they put their monthly income instead)

Co-borrower and housing payment: Sometimes when a customer adds a co-borrower, the co-borrower makes the mistake of including the same monthly housing payment that the initial applicant already provided. When this happens, it looks like the monthly housing obligation is double what it should be. Co-borrowers should not include the monthly housing obligation on their portion of the application if they share this with the initial applicant and the initial applicant has already included the full amount of the monthly payment obligation on their portion of the application. Otherwise, co-borrowers should be sure to split the monthly housing expense when completing their portion of the application.

Lender Criteria

Each lender has its own criteria that have been honed over many years spent lending to customers. Each customer’s credit score helps the lender assess the risk associated with lending to that customer and the likelihood that the customer will repay the loan. Based on that, along with additional factors like payment history, income, and other debts, the lender will decide if they can make an offer, and if so, what kind of terms they can offer.

Unsecured Loan Offers

One thing to keep in mind is that for unsecured loans, the personal credit history of the applicants plus other factors like income vs. debt is the main driver of the offers that the customer will see. Because unsecured loans are riskier for the lender, the rates can be higher than secured loan offers, especially if the customer’s credit profile is on the lower end of the credit spectrum.

Some of the main things lenders factor into their decision to pre-qualify a customer for an unsecured loan offer include:

The customer’s credit score
Income vs. Outstanding debt obligations
The amount the customer wants to borrow
Employment History
Payment History

According to Investopedia:

Payment history accounts for 35% of a borrower’s FICO score and is the most important factor for lenders. (see What’s In My FICO Scores?)
Large amounts of outstanding debt are another significant concern to lenders.
A long track record of responsible credit use is good for your credit rating.
Lenders want to see that their clients have experience using multiple sources of credit—from credit cards to car loans—in reliable ways.

Generally speaking, most lenders categorize credit scores as follows: