How we verify what we publish
Methodology
Who reviews this site
MLO License Prep content is reviewed by MLO License Prep editorial team before publication. Review means checking every fact against a primary source, not adding an unverified opinion. We do not claim MLO License Prep editorial team holds a mortgage loan originator (MLO) license, a state regulator role, or any industry certification. Nobody here is your loan officer, your lawyer, or your regulator. The authority this page stands on is the verification process below, not a credential.
Some guide bylines read Urban Algorithm editorial. That is the same team under the publisher's name: MLO License Prep is a project of Urban Algorithm LLC.
What we source, and from where
The requirements that are the same in every state come from federal statute. The pre-licensure education hours, their topic breakdown, the annual continuing education minimum, and the minimum passing score on the SAFE MLO National Test are set by the Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act (SAFE Act) and are cited here to the United States Code itself, 12 U.S.C. 5104 and 5105, with the date we last read them. We cite the statute, not a course provider's summary of it.
State-level facts, meaning the regulator's identity, how a state's licensing steps deviate from the shared federal order, and its bond mechanics, come from that state's own regulator page, named on the page and dated. We do not reprint a third party's compiled table as if we had checked it.
What we deliberately do not publish
This site hosts no dollar figure it cannot stand behind. The fees administered by the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System (NMLS), meaning the annual processing fee, the SAFE test fee, the credit report fee, and the criminal background check fee, are set by NMLS rather than by statute, and we could not confirm current amounts against a primary source. So we print no number for them. We name the item and link you to the official NMLS source for the amount in force today.
Per-state application fees and surety bond amounts get the same treatment: they change, they are already published and dated on the licensing matrix and each regulator's own page, and we route you there rather than maintain a copy that can quietly go stale. A missing number on this site is a deliberate refusal, not an oversight. See what it costs to get licensed for how each item is routed, and the state pages for the per-state links.
How often it is re-checked
Every page carries an updated date, and this site's freshness policy
re-verifies published facts every 90 days. A page that
falls out of that window is queued for re-verification, not left to go stale. When a
re-check cannot confirm a figure against a primary source, the figure comes down and
is routed to its source instead of being carried forward on trust.
The statistics page is this site's own original data study: every figure on it is computed at build time from the sourced, dated rows in the site's federal data file, never hand-typed.
Last full verification
The newest verified fact on this site is dated . This date is computed from the site's own content, not hardcoded, and moves automatically as pages get re-verified.
Corrections
Spot something wrong? Tell us what page, what fact, and what it should say instead. Reach the publisher through the Urban Algorithm contact page. MLO License Prep is a project of Urban Algorithm LLC and is not affiliated with the NMLS (Nationwide Multistate Licensing System), the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, or any government agency.