In 2002 William DiPaolo and Alan Baia founded a software company to more efficiently manage credit report ordering and analysis. Through better data management, the company’s software would improve credit file interpretation and even provide strategies to improve the files accuracy. All research and development would focus on creating software solutions that move business data in ways that reduce both cost and risk from the mortgage underwriting process.

They called the new company Cogent Road, Inc., and by mid 2003 the company launched its first software product - a credit management system they named Funding Suite. It was the first credit platform to offer loan officers insight into how to educate applicants about better credit card use in order to improve their overall credit health. Within twelve months, Funding Suite became one of the fastest growing credit management systems in the industry.

Cogent Road’s next software product was an AVM management platform called AVSpectrum, delivered in 2004. It was the first system to use detailed business rules for AVM selection. Lenders using AVSpectrum could create rules that would automatically select AVMs by loan type, down payment, geographical location and more.

In 2004 Baia and DiPaolo observed the trend toward automated underwriting, in which computer systems like Fannie Mae’s Desktop Underwriter and Freddie Mac’s Loan Prospector increasingly analyzed credit files rather than human underwriters. It suddenly seemed that a paper credit report was no longer a helpful analytical tool in an age when computer systems read the actual credit data. The partners envisioned an "intelligent credit report" that used algorithms to detect credit file errors, suggest better credit use strategies and even help the mortgage originator move the credit file more easily through automated underwriting systems. Funding Suite’s database architecture at the time was insufficient to accomplish the goal. So, in early 2005 Cogent Road set out to rebuild, from the ground up, its Funding Suite software application.

After more than two and a half years of development, and in the midst of one of the most difficult mortgage markets in 25 years, a brand new Funding Suite launched on November 05, 2007. Its newly architected database produced several technology innovations never before seen in the mortgage industry. The Intelligent Credit Report automatically reads credit files and reveals such things as the exact underwriting conditions that would be produced by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Credit Proofreading tools optimize borrower files to improve accuracy and strengthen borrowing power. Other technical achievements include separate loan officer billing, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reissuability and robust cost accounting tools across client regions, divisions, branches and departments as well as private labeling.

The founders followed Funding Suite with the 2008 launch of the AVAIL mortgage qualifying system. Mortgage originators used this product to provide automated mortgage qualifying strategies for up to one year to initially declined mortgage applicants. With little effort from the originator, declined applicants enrolled in AVAIL are eventually returned to the originator as a qualified leads. The company has been honored to hear directly from applicant’s helped by this program. Today hundreds of lenders use AVAIL to increase origination income.

January, 2010 marked the release of Roohmz Mortgage Enterprise, Cogent Road’s most ambitions software project to date. Roohmz Mortgage leverages the company’s expertise in data packaging and analytics to provide a workflow management system that continually monitors loan data from application to origination. The result is a software application that ensures loans are underwritten accurately every time, eliminating the possibility of loan buybacks. Roohmz keeps every loan in compliance with Reg B, Reg Z and RESPA, and automatically delivers adverse notices when necessary. Roohmz provides paperless origination, complete with e-signing and e-delivery of loan packages to investors.

Today the founders can generally be found in front of their custom built whiteboard creating enhancements to Funding Suite, AVAIL and Roohmz Mortgage. They are also hard at work architecting Cogent Road’s next project.