In this guide:

A button linking to Criteria Brain is included on the Sourcing tab, as shown below. A checkbox is visible adjacent to the button. The checkbox will be checked when filters have been applied and blank when filters have been switched off, or not chosen.

Being positioned within the Sourcing tab enables users to easily access Criteria Brain during the sourcing process to apply or deselect filters wherever necessary.

When selecting the Criteria Brain button, the user is launched into Criteria Brain’s website. This is opened in a separate browser window. An email address and password is required to log in. The browser can be set to remember the details, negating the need to rekey each time.

For new users, to register to use the software, when clicking on the Criteria Brain logo on the top left hand side, this will launch the user into the main Criteria Brain page where the user can apply for a licence.

The Criteria Brain link takes the user straight into the Search screen, where there is the ability to select up to six filters using the options contained within the drop down boxes shown in the following screens or by typing directly into the keyword search box.

Criteria Brain supports both residential and buy-to-let searches. Which search criteria is seen in Criteria Brain depends on the Applicant Type filter chosen within Sourcing Brain.

By default, the filters selected are ticked as Critical Criteria. These can be changed by removing the tick from the box. Once the filters have been selected, when pressing the Search button, Criteria Brain will then display a list of lenders and their acceptance of the selected criteria.

There are five categories that the lender can apply to a criteria:

To return this information back to sourcing, the user must select the Send search results to Mortgage Brain button. This is displayed just under the top section of search criteria boxes, as shown.

This action closes Criteria Brain and sends the data back into Sourcing Brain.

The filters are returned back to Sourcing Brain which displays a screen as shown below. The screen confirms the filters used and a Lender Summary section.

The explanation of the Lender Summary is as follows:

Lenders – the number of lenders searched within Criteria Brain

Pass – the number of lenders that have passed the full number of criteria

Pass (with warnings) – the number of lenders where users will need to check the warnings for the pass

Fail (outside policy) – the number of lenders who have failed a criteria due to it being outside of their policy

Fail – the number of lenders who have a ‘hard’ fail on any of the search criteria

Missing data – the number of lenders that have not provided information for the specified search criteria. Note: these lenders will still be included in the sourcing results but shown as having missing data and therefore requiring users to check with the lender on the specific criteria

Using the Apply button, the filters above can then be applied to the mortgage search.

If the user wishes to amend or add to any of the filters, this can be done by selecting the Edit Filters button which will return the user to Criteria Brain. Criteria Brain will remember the initially chosen filters which negates the need for the user to reinput.

If the user does not wish to apply any of the filters, they can be removed from being applied by selecting the Clear Filters button which will remove the ticks from the filters but leave them visible on the screen.

The Help button within the Criteria Brain section gives an explanation of the terminology used.

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Having progressed into the scheme list window, there is now an additional column titled Criteria Match. The column contains amber warning triangles or green ticks. The green ticks indicate that the filters have passed the lenders underwriting criteria. An amber triangle indicates that the lender may have passed some filters, but others may have a policy warning which needs to be checked by the user.

By clicking on the Show Details function on the right-hand side of the screen, this will display a Criteria Brain section which contains all of the information on the filters applied within Criteria Brain.

The filters are listed in the section and colour coded depending on whether they have passed or have warnings. By selecting each criteria in turn, it will change the information section to the highlighted filter, easily allowing the user to see the information provided by the lender. The associated PDF document can also be viewed from here.

The New Scenario function within sourcing allows the user to carry out different sourcing scenarios switching the filters on and off for each source if required.

Having progressed through to the illustration documentation, the Product Selection Report contains a list of the filters applied from Criteria Brain.

The full supporting PDF document containing all of the lenders responses also accompanies the illustration documentation and is saved against the client file for compliance checking.

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