HL Hunt’s Metro 2 software turns raw loan data into bureau-ready credit files in under 5 seconds

Metro 2 is the standardized file format the credit bureaus require lenders to use when reporting tradeline data — account balances, payment history, status codes and more — and it has a reputation for being rigid and unforgiving: a single misformatted field can cause a bureau to reject an entire submission. HL Hunt Financial's Metro 2 Reporting Software is built to remove that friction by having AI handle the conversion from a lender's raw loan data into a bureau-accepted file automatically.

According to the company's published materials, a lender uploads loan data in whatever format it already has — CSV, Excel, JSON, or a direct feed from its loan origination system via API — and HL Hunt's AI maps those fields onto the full Metro 2 specification, including the header, base segment, J1 and J2 borrower segments, K1 through K4 segments, and the trailer record. The company states the conversion completes in under five seconds and covers 426 distinct Metro 2 fields.

Before a file goes out, HL Hunt says it is checked against more than 200 validation rules pulled from the Metro 2 spec, with AI suggesting one-click fixes for common errors so files are less likely to bounce once they reach a bureau. The platform also includes dispute management — handling ACDV and AUD disputes that bureaus send back to a data furnisher — with AI pre-filling suggested responses based on the lender's own records, plus an audit trail the company positions as a compliance record.

HL Hunt frames the product as an alternative to two existing options: doing Metro 2 formatting manually in a spreadsheet, which the company says requires deep expertise in the spec and can take weeks to learn, or using legacy Metro 2 software, which it describes as template-based, SFTP-batch-only, and generally priced between $500 and $2,000 a month with separate setup fees. Pricing for HL Hunt's own product is volume-based: a Starter tier at $99 per month for up to 500 tradelines, a Business tier at $299 per month for up to 5,000 tradelines with API access and dispute management, and a custom-priced Enterprise tier for unlimited volume with dedicated onboarding.

The company states the tool is built to CDIA Metro 2 Format standards and designed to support Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) data-furnishing obligations, which require that data reported to the bureaus be accurate, complete and timely. HL Hunt also cites a 99.9% validation-accuracy figure for its own conversion process. That figure, like the rest of the performance claims here, comes from HL Hunt's own marketing and has not been independently audited by FinCrunch — for a tool whose entire value proposition rests on data furnished to credit bureaus being correct, the standard a lender would reasonably want to hold it to is verification against its own historical submissions, not the vendor's self-reported accuracy rate alone.