We are in the process of reviewing software that will complete the name proxy and geocoding based on the application information we upload.

Do any of you use this type of software? If so can you please provide me with the company names so we can set up some demos? We have seen one demo and really liked the software, however, I don't want to overlook another vendor.

Thanks!

Wolters Kluwer/PCi: Fair Lending Wiz

Thank you!

I have not used, have seen demos, but Compliance Technologies in VA has a suite of products, one of which does this proxy methodology.

We thinking about this as well. How accurate are these programs? Has there been any issues with examiners determining that the software was too inaccurate and, therefore, the monitoring conclusions were potentially inaccurate?

Like any other software, the bank would be expected to periodically test calculations to make sure that nothing has changed and it continues to be accurate.

Set up properly, with data mapped correctly, I have not seen anything I could not manually replicate.

Agree with Kathleen.

HMMMM. Kathleen, how would you manually replicate a proxy method? Maybe write a program such that all Lees are male and all Terrys are Female?

There are certain things you cannot replicate but you can test it to see that it is consistent for something like a proxy method. That it treats the name consistently.

Trees, sometimes proxies are just a good guestimate! My wife was an IT auditor. There were 5 in her department:
Claire, Leslie, Robin, Pat and Roxanne. The first 3 were men, the last 2 women.

If the enforcement agencies use proxies, they could follow-up (on auto loans for example) by going to the state driver's license department and getting race, ethnicity and gender information which is most likely collected but not displayed on licenses.

I use RATA. It does both name proxies and geocoding.

Welcome to BOL Ryan...................

I've heard of Leslie and Robin for males, but never Claire. I would hate to have that name in high school.

Claire's middle name was Waldo.

My guess his parents were not planning for children from the start.

Claire/Clare used to be a common male name. Usually Clare was male and Claire was female. It is old fashioned.

Same with Lesley/Leslie (m/f), Frances/Francis, Marion/Marian.

Terry/Terri ??

For Frances/Francis..that is f/m. I am not too coordinated today!

Then there's Lindsay, Ashley, Morgan, Cary, Courtney, Tracy, Shannon, Meredith, and Kimberly, which all used to be exclusively male, but are now more commonly female. The list goes on and on, though.

And that is why proxy software reviews names provided to Social Security, to follow trends by year.

The Federal Reserve published a "do-it-yourself" proxy methodology that could be done using a spreadsheet. You can find it at http://www.philadelphiafed.org/bank-reso...to-lending.cfm. In addition, the CFPB has promised to publish its BISG proxy methodology this summer.

We use Marquis software's CenTrax as our fair lending software. The software proxies by first name and surname.

The software ignores unisex names. So gender/joint gender would be left blank when running the proxy. The same thing goes for names it does not recognize (like my own)