If you’ve been using MeridianLink Mortgage for any length of time, you know how central pricing is to your workflow. A small mismatch in how interest rates are quoted can ripple across your pipeline—causing confusion for borrowers, friction with loan officers, and even reputational damage when rates don’t match what was promised.
Many lenders struggle with this because the out-of-the-box investor set pricing rules in Price My Loan (PML) don’t always reflect the unique way your business structures rates. Over time, those small differences can add up to serious inconsistencies. That’s where Custom Overlays come in.
Custom Overlays give you direct control over how pricing and eligibility rules are applied—without having to submit requests to Price My Loan support for every small change. With them, you can align your pricing engine with your real-world quoting practices, reduce inaccuracies, and build more trust with your borrowers.
In this article, we’ll explore:
- Why inaccurate interest rate quotes happen.
- The business risks of not addressing them.
- How Custom Overlays work in practice.
- Real-world examples of what you can do with them.
- Best practices to start managing your own overlays.
Why Inaccurate Quotes Happen
When you’re quoting interest rates, accuracy depends on the alignment between your internal pricing policies and what PML is configured to show. Here’s where problems creep in:
- Investor restrictions aren’t reflected correctly.
For example, a certain investor may not allow cash-out refinances above 90% LTV—but unless that restriction is set correctly in PML, a loan officer may still see it as an eligible option. - Loan channel or branch differences are ignored.
Pricing often varies across retail, wholesale, or correspondent channels. Without overlays, those differences may not show up in the initial quote. - Credit score, loan amount, or state-based adjustments aren’t applied.
Borrowers can get quoted one rate in conversation, but PML later recalculates based on eligibility rules the loan officer didn’t see. - Slow turnaround on changes.
If you’re relying on PML Support to make every adjustment, there’s lag time. Market conditions change quickly, and your team may be quoting outdated rates.
Over time, these small misalignments could create a credibility gap between what your team promises and what your borrowers actually receive.
The Business Risk of Getting Pricing Wrong
Most lenders don’t uncover pricing inaccuracy until something goes wrong. Here are the real costs of not managing overlays effectively:
- Lost trust with borrowers. Few things frustrate a borrower more than hearing “the rate changed” after they thought they had locked one in. Even if the difference is minor, it raises doubts.
- Loan officer inefficiency. If loan officers spend time backtracking, explaining discrepancies, or rerunning quotes, that’s time not spent on moving loans forward.
- Compliance risk. Inaccurate rate disclosures can open the door to regulatory scrutiny.
- Margin erosion. If overlays aren’t applied consistently, your pricing may be too aggressive in some cases and too conservative in others, leaving money on the table.
In short: pricing mistakes cost you business.
What Custom Overlays Do
Custom Overlays are a feature in Price My Loan that let you set your own rules for pricing and eligibility. Think of them as a way to “fine-tune” PML so that it matches your company’s real-world practices.
Instead of calling support to make every change, your team can:
- Create and test your own overlays. You can draft rules, test them with sample loans, and only release them once they work as intended.
- Control how rules are grouped and applied. You can build policies (rule containers) that apply only in certain scenarios—like retail vs. wholesale, or IMB vs. Fannie Mae loans.
- Set rules for price adjustments, rate changes, or loan eligibility. For example:
- Add a 0.500% price adjustment to VA loans.
- Make cash-out refinances over $1MM ineligible.
- Reduce the rate by 0.250% for credit scores above 740.
- Keep a version history. Every time you publish overlays, the version is stored. You can revert back if needed.
- Batch update overlays. If you need to make bulk changes (like reducing Investor A price adjustments from 0.500% to 0.375%), you can send PML Support a spreadsheet for automated updates.
The result? Your pricing engine works the way your business does.
Real-World Examples
Here are a few common scenarios where overlays can make an immediate difference:
- Disqualifying certain loan programs.
Example: Make all nonconforming programs ineligible. - Investor-specific restrictions.
Example: Only disqualify Investor A programs when they are cash-out refinances with LTV ≥ 90%. - Rate adjustments.
Example: Reduce rate by 0.250% for borrowers with credit scores ≥ 740. - Channel-specific pricing.
Example: Apply different adjustments for retail vs. wholesale loans. - Margin protection.
Example: Set a maximum back-end YSP so you never price below your profitability threshold.
These are small changes individually, but together they protect your margins, increase accuracy, and reduce surprises for both borrowers and staff.
Best Practices for Using Custom Overlays
If you’re thinking about adding overlays to your workflow, here are some tips from our consulting experience:
- Start with the biggest pain points.
Don’t try to rewrite your entire pricing structure in overlays on day one. Start with the misalignments that cause the most borrower confusion or loan officer frustration. - Organize with policies.
Group rules logically—by investor, channel, or product type. This keeps rules cleaner and reduces duplicate work. - Test before releasing.
Always run overlays in a draft environment first. Verify with sample loans before pushing to production. - Keep documentation.
Note why each overlay was added and when. This makes it easier for new staff to understand the logic later. - Review regularly.
Market conditions change. Set a quarterly review to make sure your overlays still match your quoting strategy.
The Bottom Line
Inaccurate pricing isn’t just a system problem—it’s a business problem. Every time a borrower hears one rate but later sees another, your credibility takes a hit. Loan officers lose efficiency. Margins can slip.
By managing your own Custom Overlays in Price My Loan, you put control back in your hands. You can align pricing with the way your company actually quotes, reduce inaccuracies, and build more trust with borrowers.
For lenders who’ve been on MeridianLink Mortgage for a few years, overlays are often the next step in system optimization. You’ve already mastered the basics—now it’s time to refine.
How We Can Help
At Cyberlink Software Solutions, our team of MeridianLink Mortgage optimization experts works with lenders every day to refine their systems. We can help you:
- Identify where your pricing misalignments are.
- Build and test Custom Overlays that solve those issues.
- Train your staff on maintaining overlays going forward.
If you’ve noticed pricing inconsistencies—or worse, if borrowers have—now is the time to take action. Custom Overlays are one of the most powerful tools you have to ensure your quotes are accurate, consistent, and aligned with your business goals.