Do you mean "the application"...form? What if "the application" occurred casually and the lender insisted on a nice neat typed form in place of the original long-hand scribble? Very likely the signature line on "the application" just says "date" or something else that would cause the applicant to date the "official" application form on the date is is actually signed, not the as-of date (when the scribble was handed to or written by the loan officer.) If you're actually looking at replacement documents with cosmetic enhancements, the information used to process the request (and order the CBR) was actually received days or weeks earlier. The day the bank received the original scribble is the application date. Certainly, you need to know that date (for all the reasons discussed above.) Maybe this boils down to policy/procedure infractions, not regulatory violations?