Borrower Safeguards

Trust & Safety

How Total Quality Lending protects borrowers, secures sensitive data, and helps you avoid the fraud patterns that target mortgage transactions.

Data security

Total Quality Lending treats your application data, identity documents, bank statements, and tax records as the sensitive financial information they are. Our security posture includes:

  • Encryption in transit: TLS for every connection between you, our website, and our document portal. Public pages are served only over HTTPS with HSTS enabled.
  • Encryption at rest: Borrower documents are stored in encrypted cloud storage with role-restricted access.
  • Secure document upload: We send you a unique upload link rather than asking you to email sensitive PDFs. Never email full SSN, bank-account numbers, or copies of your driver’s license unsolicited.
  • Access controls: Only the loan officer, processor, and underwriter assigned to your file have access to your documents. Access is logged.
  • Retention: Borrower records are retained for the periods required by federal lending law (typically a minimum of five years for closed loans) and disposed of securely thereafter.

Identity verification

Mortgage lending is subject to Customer Identification Program (CIP) rules under the Bank Secrecy Act. We verify the identity of every borrower at application using a combination of:

  • Government-issued photo ID (US driver’s license, US passport, or — for foreign nationals — a valid passport plus US visa or other legal-presence documentation).
  • For US borrowers: SSN matched against the credit bureau record. For ITIN borrowers: IRS ITIN documentation.
  • Address verification through multiple data points (bank statements, utility bills, or property records).
  • Sanctions / watchlist screening (see the OFAC section below).

For foreign national borrowers, we accept enhanced documentation in lieu of a US credit file — including international credit references and home-country banking history — but the identity-verification standard is the same.

Anti-fraud measures & wire fraud

The most common fraud pattern in mortgage closings is wire-instruction fraud: a criminal impersonates a title company or lender and sends fake wiring instructions to a buyer who is about to send tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash-to-close. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) receives thousands of these complaints every year. Our protocols to prevent this:

  • Verified wire instructions only: Wire instructions are delivered by the title or escrow company through a secured channel — never by unsolicited email.
  • Voice-verification rule: Before you wire any funds, call the title or escrow company at a phone number you obtain independently (not the number in the wire-instruction email) and verbally confirm the routing and account number digit-by-digit.
  • Email red flags: Be skeptical of any last-minute “updated wire instructions” email, any email with subtle misspellings of company or person names, or any email that pressures you to wire quickly.
  • TQL never asks for wire transfers to TQL. Cash-to-close goes to the title or escrow company — not to Total Quality Lending or any individual employee.

If you receive a suspicious email or call, stop the transaction, do not wire, and call your loan officer at (800) 304-1925 or the TQL number you have on file from a separate prior communication.

Compliance with anti-discrimination law

Total Quality Lending is an Equal Housing Lender and complies with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) and the Fair Housing Act. We do not discriminate against any applicant on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, sex, marital status, familial status, sexual orientation, age (where the applicant has the capacity to contract), disability, military status, exercise of any right under the Consumer Credit Protection Act or the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, receipt of public assistance, or any other basis prohibited by law.

If you believe you’ve experienced lending discrimination at TQL, see the complaint channels on our Licensing page — or file directly with HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.

OFAC compliance

Total Quality Lending screens every borrower against the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions lists, including the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list. Per our guidelines and U.S. federal law, we do not extend mortgage credit to:

  • Individuals on the SDN list or any other OFAC consolidated sanctions list.
  • Citizens or residents of jurisdictions subject to comprehensive U.S. sanctions programs.
  • Borrowers whose source of funds cannot be reasonably verified against sanctions and anti-money-laundering standards.

Sanctions screening is a federal compliance requirement, not a Total Quality Lending preference. The OFAC sanctions program is administered by the U.S. Treasury and applies to every U.S. financial institution.

Privacy

How we collect, use, share, and retain your personal information is documented in full in our Privacy Policy. California residents have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act — see our CCPA Notice for the right to know, the right to delete, the right to correct, and the right to limit the use of sensitive personal information.

What to do if you suspect mortgage fraud

If you suspect you’ve been targeted by a mortgage-fraud scheme — whether the suspicion involves TQL, another lender, a title company, or an unrelated party — report it. The earlier these are reported, the better the chance the authorities can intervene.

If the suspicion involves a TQL employee or a TQL communication, please also email CustomerCare@TQLend.com so we can investigate internally.

Questions? Talk to us.

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