Everything everywhere all at once: The end of the assembly line in mortgage lending

"AI opens a different path: a nonlinear one. In traditional workflows, underwriting is too time-consuming to happen continuously. It can take a human underwriter six hours to complete a full review, often spread over two or three days due to competing priorities. Compounding the problem is that, per STRATMOR's 2024 Peer Group Roundtable, the average retail lender's underwriters touch files 3.8 times between application and close."

"AI changes that. Because underwriting with AI can take six minutes, not six hours, you can afford to do it repeatedly. Lenders can underwrite as they go, every time a document is uploaded, a fact changes, or a question arises. That instant feedback loop keeps the process moving without delay and without frustrating the borrower. It doesn't matter if it takes 100 touches; you still close faster."

"Just as important, AI enables true parallel processing. While one part of the system calculates income, another simultaneously checks its impact on asset thresholds, appraisal logic, or large deposit flags. Tasks that once required multiple specialists across days now happen together, in seconds. Every time the system receives a new piece of information, it runs hundreds of validations automatically. Income, employment, assets, credit, appraisal conditions, and more are all checked at once."

Most lenders use sequential, step-by-step workflows that create inherent delays and repeated touches across application, document collection, processing, underwriting, and conditions. Human underwriting commonly takes hours and is often spread over days, with underwriters touching files multiple times between application and close. Holding files for a one-touch underwrite extends borrower wait times. AI reduces underwriting time from hours to minutes, enabling continuous re-underwriting whenever documents or facts change, producing instant feedback and faster closes even with many touches. AI also enables parallel processing so hundreds of validations across income, assets, credit, and appraisal run simultaneously whenever new information arrives.

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