This is the person who does the lion's share of the paperwork with your application once you leave the building. Processors get the paperwork ready for the underwriter, who puts your numbers and creditworthiness through the lender's specific risk models. They play traffic cop on your application, double-checking the work of the loan officer (who may or may not be your primary contact) and the underwriter to make sure the numbers on your application are correct and that all the interior players in the loan process weigh in on your application.

Loan officers and loan processors have to work closely together because loan officers are there to close loans. It always makes sense to ask a loan officer how new she is and if she is teamed with a particular group of people, including an assigned processor that hopefully she's worked with for a while. You might find yourself talking with the processor as much or more than the loan officer; how well the loan officer and her processor work together indicates how efficiently your process will go.

While the loan officer takes your information and answers general questions, the loan processor is the first person in the approval chain to closely scrutinize your credit report and the claims you've made on your application regarding your credit. If you've said you've filed bankruptcy or had property foreclosed upon, that's a trigger for lots of questions headed your way. If you fail to mention those issues, your relationship with the loan processor — and everyone up and down the line at this particular lender — is going to turn into a bad date pretty quickly.