A basic credit pull gives you a snapshot of someone’s credit profile at a single moment. It shows accounts, balances, and payment history. For many lending decisions, that’s sufficient. But certain situations call for deeper intelligence. That’s where CRS add-ons enter the picture.
Think of add-ons as extensions that enhance your core credit decision. Rather than building separate integrations with multiple specialized vendors, you layer these capabilities onto your existing CRS One connection. This keeps your technical architecture clean while expanding what your credit underwriting can detect.
What Are the Core CRS Add-Ons?
CRS offers seven primary add-ons that address specific underwriting questions. OFAC screening verifies that applicants don’t match sanctioned entities. MLA verification confirms military service status for compliance purposes. Income estimation supplements credit data when applicants can’t provide recent tax returns. Bankruptcy data ensures you catch recent filings beyond what credit reports show. Trended data reveals payment trends over 24+ months. TEC score identifies consumers likely to default. Fraud Shield detects identity fraud and synthetic fraud patterns.
Each add-on answers a specific underwriting question without requiring a new vendor relationship.
OFAC Screening: Compliance You Can’t Skip
OFAC screening checks applicants against the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s sanctions list. If you lend money to a sanctioned individual, you face serious regulatory consequences. This isn’t optional for most lenders.
Traditionally, OFAC screening required a separate API call to a specialized vendor. CRS One integrates OFAC screening directly into your credit flow. You get the compliance check alongside your credit data without additional integration work.
The screening uses first and last names plus any additional identifying information from your application. It flags potential matches for human review. This prevents false declines while ensuring you catch genuine compliance issues.
MLA Verification: Military Lending Compliance
The Military Lending Act requires lenders to verify military status and check for SCRA eligibility. SCRA (Servicemembers Civil Relief Act) entitles active duty members to lower interest rates on pre-service debts.
MLA verification through CRS confirms whether an applicant is on active duty. This prevents accidental SCRA violations and helps you offer the correct rates to service members.
Like OFAC screening, MLA verification could be a separate vendor call. Building it into CRS One means you handle compliance verification and credit assessment in parallel.
Income Estimation: Filling Verification Gaps
Many applicants struggle to provide recent income documentation. Freelancers don’t have W-2s. Business owners have variable income. Gig economy workers have complex tax situations.
CRS Income estimation analyzes credit tradelines and other data signals to estimate household income. This provides a baseline when traditional documentation isn’t available or when you want a second opinion on stated income.
Income estimation doesn’t replace actual verification. Rather, it supplements your underwriting by providing another data point. This is especially valuable in BNPL decisions where you need quick approval without extensive documentation.
Bankruptcy Data: Beyond the Credit Report
Credit reports show bankruptcy discharges and filings. But they lag. A recent bankruptcy filing might not appear on credit reports for 10 to 30 days. If you’re making a same-day lending decision, you could miss this information.
CRS Bankruptcy data pulls from public records, giving you visibility into recent filings before they appear on credit reports. This is crucial for lenders who need the most current bankruptcy status.
Bankruptcy data also shows chapter type and filing date. This helps underwriters understand the consumer’s debt relief situation better.
Trended Data: Understanding Payment Patterns
Credit reports show current balances and recent payment history. Trended data goes deeper, showing how balances have changed over 24+ months. It also reveals which accounts the consumer pays first when money is tight.
This pattern data reveals behavioral risk that a snapshot misses. A consumer with acceptable credit but declining income might pay credit cards before auto loans. Trended data surfaces this priority signal.
Lenders use trended data to refine risk models. Someone with recovering credit but improving payment trends looks different from someone with the same credit score but deteriorating habits.
TEC Score: Predicting Default Risk
The Total Exposure Count score identifies consumers likely to become delinquent. It uses payment history, account mix, recent credit inquiries, and other signals to predict near-term default risk.
TEC score complements traditional FICO scoring. FICO focuses on past behavior and current risk. TEC focuses on imminent default risk. A consumer might have acceptable FICO 8 but an elevated TEC score.
Using TEC score as a supplementary decision tool helps lenders tighten underwriting without blanket score cutoffs. It flags specific consumers where additional scrutiny makes sense.
Fraud Shield: Detecting Identity and Synthetic Fraud
Fraud Shield analyzes credit profile data to detect identity fraud and synthetic fraud patterns. Identity fraud happens when someone uses another person’s information. Synthetic fraud happens when someone combines real and fabricated information to create a false identity.
Both types cause problems for lenders. Fraud Shield catches these patterns before you extend credit. It works by identifying inconsistencies in credit profile data and comparing patterns against known fraud signatures.
Fraud detection complements credit assessment. An applicant might have adequate credit but exhibit fraud indicators. Fraud Shield surfaces this risk separately from credit decisioning.
How Add-Ons Simplify Your Stack
The traditional approach to comprehensive underwriting requires multiple vendors. You run credit pulls with one provider. OFAC screening with another. Income estimation elsewhere. Fraud detection with yet another.
This creates integration complexity. Each vendor has different APIs, different SLAs, and different error handling. Debugging issues becomes harder when failures could originate from any of five systems.
CRS add-ons consolidate these capabilities into your existing CRS One integration. You connect once. You get credit data plus optional enhancements. Your application logic stays cleaner.
Configuring Add-Ons for Your Use Case
Not every add-on is appropriate for every decision. A BNPL lender might use OFAC screening and Fraud Shield for quick approvals but skip MLA verification. A mortgage lender needs all compliance checks but might skip TEC score if using other scoring models.
CRS lets you configure which add-ons to pull. You only pay for what you use. This keeps costs down while maintaining flexibility.
Building Better Underwriting
The goal of add-ons is enabling better underwriting without vendor sprawl. Each add-on answers a specific question that credit data alone doesn’t answer. Together, they create a more complete risk picture.
A team with over 25 years of credit industry experience built these add-ons because lenders repeatedly asked for them. They’re not theoretical features. They’re responses to real underwriting needs.
Talk with our credit and compliance experts about which add-ons make sense for your underwriting strategy.
