What is the Cobalt Intelligence SOS API?

What is the Cobalt Intelligence SOS API? (And Why High-Volume Lenders Need It)

You’re staring at a queue of 50 loan applications at 4:30 PM on a Friday. Your underwriting team is bottlenecked because the California Secretary of State website is loading slowly, and your offshore verification team in the Philippines has flagged ten "no record found" results that you suspect are just typos.

This is the operational reality for most alternative lenders scaling past 100 deals a month. You can’t automate approvals if your primary entity check—verifying the business actually exists and is active—is a manual process.

Here is the technical breakdown of what the Cobalt Intelligence Secretary of State (SOS) API is, where it fits in your stack, and whether your volume justifies the integration.

Executive Summary: What is the SOS API?

Share this with your CTO or Head of Risk:

The Cobalt Intelligence SOS API provides programmatic, real-time access to business entity records across all 50 U.S. states and D.C. It replaces manual website searches by returning structured JSON data—including legal name, registration status, formation date, and officer details—directly into your Loan Origination System (LOS) or CRM.

The Core Function:

It answers the binary question: "Is this business active and in good standing right now?" without human intervention3.

The Problem: Why Manual Verification Breaks at Scale

Most lenders start by having underwriters manually check state websites. This works for 20 apps a month. It breaks at 200.

• The "Achilles Heel" of Scale: Idea Financial, a lender processing 5,000 to 10,000 apps monthly, identified manual SOS lookups as their "Achilles heel". It was the one step preventing them from automating their underwriting flow.
• Human Error: When 1West (a lending marketplace) relied on manual checks, they faced a spike in "incompletes" due to data entry mismatches. If an underwriter mistypes "Incorporated" as "Inc," the search fails, the deal stalls, and you lose the merchant to a faster competitor.
• Latency vs. Freshness: Data aggregators (like credit bureaus) often rely on cached data that can be 30-90 days old. In the MCA space, a business can dissolve or lose good standing overnight. Cobalt prioritizes live, real-time lookups directly from the state source.

How It Works & Key Data Points

The API acts as a gateway. You send a business name and state; it returns the official record.

The "Must-Have" Data Fields:

• normalizedStatus: Returns values like active, inactive, or pending. You can map this directly to your knockout logic (e.g., IF status != 'active' THEN auto-decline).
• filingDate: Critical for "Time in Business" calculations. 1West uses this to automatically qualify merchants for better terms if the SOS date proves they’ve been open longer than stated on the application.
• screenshotUrl: A timestamped, watermarked screenshot of the state website. This is audit-proof evidence for bank partners and compliance teams, replacing the "Print Screen to PDF" workflow.
• confidenceLevel: A score (0.0 to 1.0) indicating how closely the result matches your input. This allows you to auto-approve high scores (>0.90) and route low scores to manual review.

Where SOS API Fits in Your Lending Stack

Don't put this at the end of your process. It belongs at the top of the funnel as a Knockout Mechanism.

The "Speed & Ease" Workflow:

1. Intake: Application received via portal.
2. Step 1: SOS Check (API Trigger): System pings Cobalt API.
   
   • Result: Status = Inactive / Dissolved → Auto-Decline (Save credit pull cost).
   • Result: Status = Active → Proceed.
3. Step 2: Fraud & Credit: Pull Experian/Equifax and run bank data (Plaid/Ocrolus).
4. Step 3: Decision: Underwriter reviews only the pre-verified, active businesses.

Visualizing the lift: By placing SOS verification before expensive credit and bank data pulls, you lower your cost of goods sold (COGS) on every declined application.

Who Should Use This API?

Not every lender needs API automation. If you fund 5 deals a month, keep doing it manually.

• Alternative Lenders (MCA/Term/LOC): You need speed. If you take 4 hours to verify an entity, the merchant has already taken funding elsewhere.
• High-Volume Marketplaces: Like 1West, you need to scrub thousands of leads instantly to route them to the right funders.
• Equipment Finance: You need to verify exact legal names to file UCC liens correctly (Cobalt also offers UCC data in 11 states).

Is This Right For You? (Decision Tree)

Criteria

Manual / Offshore Team

Cobalt SOS API

Monthly Volume

< 50 applications

100 - 10,000+ applications 

Turnaround Time

Hours or Next Day

Seconds / Real-Time 

Cost Constraint

High Fixed Cost (Salaries)

Variable Cost (Per Lookup) 

Tech Maturity

Low (Email/PDF based)

Medium/High (Using Salesforce, LOS, or proprietary tech)

Primary Pain

"I need to save money."

"I need to scale without hiring more people."

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Implementation & Next Steps

Integration is lighter than you think. 1West’s engineering team completed the core build in less than a week with roughly 20-30 developer hours.

Don't overhaul your entire stack tomorrow. Start by testing the data quality against your manual process.

• Review the API Docs: See the full field list for your specific state mix.
• Run a Match Test: Take 10 recent "Incomplete" applications and run them through our website application to see if the API catches what your team missed.
• Schedule a Technical Walkthrough: Click here for a free demo

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