With the rise of artificial intelligence in the mortgage sector, firms examining its possibilities might focus on the broker area to determine where the technology will be most influential.
Whether their approach to AI comes from a need to find business or a wish to stay on top of trends, brokers, more than most other mortgage professionals, currently show an inclination toward the technology. While they still need to be wary of the risk like the rest of the industry, their recognition of the benefits AI offers could eventually spur greater adoption throughout the mortgage industry.
"I think brokers are so eager and forward thinking to adopt it because of the entrepreneurial spirit that a broker actually has. They are in business for themselves, more so than the retail space," said Jason Bressler, chief technology officer at United Wholesale Mortgage.
In a
Regulatory concerns are leading the
An aspect of generative AI that serves brokers well as a marketing and lead-generation tool is the
With AI, a broker can upload a basic list of past contacts with interest rate information and customize it in "a completely different way to make it very, very unique per each individual client," he said in reference specifically to ChatUWM, his company's proprietary AI created for broker partners.
Asking a generative AI tool to create messages for a list of clients, spelling out what a specific rate might mean for each can be done in "legitimately, five to 10 seconds," Bressler said.
Aside from assistance in creating content, AI can also devise an appropriate marketing strategy for brokers and loan officers by looking through prior correspondence and answering the when and how with each potential lead.
Because brokerages are often small- or mid-sized businesses, any tools that help them strengthen customer relations can be a meaningful addition, said Nora Apsel, CEO of Morty, the mortgage platform that offers brokers various software to scale operations.
"Leveraging AI for these marketing-ask type of things — when should I check in, how does this person like to communicate with me, phone versus text — helping be their assistant or copilot is also the thing people really want."
Still, with any emerging technology, mortgage leaders also caution the early enthusiasm can make it easy to downplay possible risks, even for tasks like marketing, which on paper,
Generative AI like ChatGPT makes plenty of information available,"but it doesn't mean that that information isn't in violation of a state or federal law," said Valerie Saunders, chief executive strategist of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers who
"As we venture more and more into putting information out there using whatever tool it is, we still maintain diligence in staying compliant with the rules and regulations that we have to abide by."
Aside from marketing and communication, new technologies are able to help brokers comb through the wide array of loan options available. Advanced algorithmic models, which some consider to be another form of AI, can also quickly aggregate and locate the "right" options in a channel where consumers and their brokers can expect to see a long list of products.
"It's not all interest rate or pricing or cost," said Christopher Griffith, co-founder of Denison, Texas-based mortgage brokerage Be My Neighbor. Rather, AI may help determine the likelihood of closing based on other variables specific to a broker's network of lenders and their borrower clients.
"We can analyze our past relationship with lender partners and see probability instances, so the decisions that we make today can be improved," he said. "From every decision aspect that gets made, AI can augment and make the human more efficient at some point," Griffith added.
AI's benefit lies in the ability to present "the right information at the right time," concurred Apsel.
"AI is a really great tool to be able to take a set of information and overlay it on top of that entire matrix, to be able to offer up recommendations."
With the modern consumer expecting their experiences from shopping to banking to be quick, AI opens the door to make home buying resemble "an Amazon kind of experience," a goal of Giri Devanur, the CEO and founder of real estate brokerage Realpha. Devanur's company says it offers a commission-free process for home buying by applying artificial intelligence.
In September, Realpha moved into the mortgage broker space with its
"Amazon doesn't hand it to somebody else. You get it as one entity. We believe that the same engineering progress has to come in, and that's what we're working on," Devanur said.
"How do we make human agents more efficient? That is going to be the theme of the entire industry itself. Mortgage cannot stay away from that."
Over time, as brokers become more adept with artificial intelligence, the technology's growth and ease of use could encourage some businesses to try and develop their own internal generative AI systems fed with rules and criteria specific to the company's needs. That, in turn, can lead to savings if it helps them eliminate redundant processes or tools.
"The cost keeps coming down for all kinds of generative AI and large language modeling right now, which is going to make it more accessible for a lot more companies," Bressler noted.
While many in the mortgage industry may not completely understand everything AI is capable of now, some brokers, particularly those "serious about loan origination being their career," are now looking at generative AI tools as a must-have, he added.
They approach it with the mindset of having a tool that could do the job of three to four different people, and that leads them to think, "'I've got all of this access if I know how to use it properly,'" Bressler said.
While the industry needs to move forward, Saunders also cautioned loan originators — whether they work for themselves or a lender — to remember the value they bring to borrowers and how technology cannot replace it.
"We're trying to be faster, quicker. We want it in a minute. But what are you losing?" she asked.
