U.S. Mortgage Index

Mortgage license

Definition

A mortgage license is an authorization, usually issued by a state regulator and recorded in NMLS, that allows a company or individual to do specified mortgage work. License status is the current state of that authorization.

In plain English

Not every company that talks about mortgages holds the same license. A mortgage license is the official permission for a defined activity in a state. NMLS is the system that stores many of those licenses. This page is the authorization, not the NMLS identifier.

Technical definition

CSBS’s official NMLS page is the PRIMARY identity for the licensing system that records these authorizations.

Why it matters

Profile pages that say a firm is licensed are pointing at this concept, not at an NMLS ID alone.

Sources reviewed