What should you check before signing an LOS vendor contract?

Check seven things before you sign: the vendor's viability, whether the data model actually fits your asset class, the audit trail and reporting an examiner or investor will demand, the real integration effort, the migration and exit terms, the pricing structure beneath the demo price, and what the vendor's existing customers say when you call them. Most loan origination systems demo well. The trouble shows up months later, in the field the data model cannot hold, the report that turns out to be a custom build, the integration that was "prebuilt" only in the sense that it exists, or the exit clause nobody read.

This checklist is the working artifact we use when we help lenders evaluate an LOS. It is 56 concrete questions across the seven areas above, written to be asked out loud, with a reference-call script for the conversations where the real story tends to come out. It names no vendors and disparages none; we build and integrate loan origination systems and resell none, so it has nothing to sell you but better questions.

A vague answer is an answer. The point is not to catch a vendor out, it is to find out, before you commit, where you will be spending real money and real quarters that the demo did not show. Give us a name and work email and the full checklist opens immediately, as a clean page you can print or save as a PDF.