Introduction

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) offers lenders and service bureaus access to its systems and data for paying Single Family monthly (periodic) mortgage insurance premiums and retrieving reports. Different IDs are required for different systems and tasks.

FHA Connection

The FHA Connection is a HUD website with direct, secure, online access to HUD's computer systems. The FHA Connection can be used to pay and monitor monthly (periodic) mortgage insurance payments, get pregenerated reports, and request online reports. See FHA Connection and Monthly Premiums. User registration for the FHA Connection is required. An FHA Connection user ID is issued when the applicant is accepted. The user ID and a password must be entered to access the FHA Connection. The lender's FHA Connection Application Coordinator must grant the appropriate FHA Connection application authorizations to the lender's qualified users. The FHA Connection Guide provides basic information on using the FHA Connection.

Secure File Transfer Protocol

The secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) is used as an alternative to the FHA Connection to do the following:

• Submit Batch Payments: Submit Single Family monthly (periodic) mortgage insurance premium payments directly to a secure server on the HUD network. Lenders and service bureaus must sign up for this service and use the appropriate batch file formats. When the applicant is accepted, HUD issues an Xnnnnn ID that must be used to log on to HUD's secure server for submitting payments. See Getting Started - Monthly (Periodic) Premium Payments and Monthly (Periodic) Mortgage Insurance Premium Batch Payment Processing Instructions for CPU to CPU Transmissions.
   
• Retrieve Report Files: Retrieve pregenerated Single Family monthly (periodic) mortgage insurance premium report files directly from a secure server on the HUD network (referred to as the Alternate Report Retrieval process).The appropriate report file layouts are used to effectively manipulate the downloaded information. Lenders and service bureaus must sign up for this service. When the applicant is accepted, HUD issues an Xnnnnn ID that must be used to log on to HUD's secure server for retrieving report files. See Getting Pregenerated Monthly (Periodic) Mortgage Insurance Premium Reports Using the Alternate Report Retrieval Process.

Two different Xnnnnn IDs are issued, one for submitting payments and another for retrieving report files.