The AI Advantage in Mortgage Lending

Ryley, how has AI already changed/began to change the lending industry?

To understand the impact of AI, we need to review how things were before the recent wave of excitement and briefly look at the foundations of digital transformation. While I am new to AWC and the lending industry, I credit both our former and current teams for having built those foundations thoughtfully and deliberately. Over the past decade, many organizations equated digital transformation by simply digitizing paper files and putting them into the mystical entity known as “the cloud”. That approach, in hindsight, has proven insufficient. AWC, in comparison, chose a more rigorous path of building its own systems, automating workflows, and embedding institutional knowledge into its processes. This business-building strategy proved quite prescient, as it allowed AWC to more seamlessly integrate other relevant software, dissect its own data, and use AI to analyze workflows.

The real transformation, for AWC as with any business, lies in its people. By fostering a culture that embraces change and continually asks how work can be done better, any business will naturally thrive with the adoption of new technology. It’s not an immediate process, but by carefully developing increasingly well-structured, automated systems, we reduce manual effort while preserving time with people, ultimately retaining the final judgment on all tasks. Businesses that have not embraced this paradigm, and who bypassed long-term effort in the hopes that AI will be an “easy button” are now discovering that technology cannot replace foundations that were never built. The takeaway here is that you have to take the time to deliberately develop a strong foundation, and once you have that, AI can seamlessly slot into your business in the form of heightened automation capacity.

What are the biggest boons and the riskiest risks?

I’ll begin with the risks, as they shape our daily thinking. Anyone who has worked with generative AI understands its limitations. It makes errors; it will have “hallucinations,” but the biggest risk is the temptation for humans to outsource their critical thinking. In an industry that demands precision and prudent judgment, these risks require constant vigilance.

Data privacy and cybersecurity are equally paramount. The same tools that enhance productivity can also embolden bad actors, which is why we are highly selective about the technologies we adopt and the partners we work with; I like Copilot, for example. Many widely available AI tools simply do not meet the security and compliance standards required in our environment. So, I would advise caution to any business owner looking to adopt AI on a large scale.

That said, the upside is compelling. With a strong digital foundation already in place, AI allows us to layer automation into our workflows in an incredible way. As our CEO, George Botros, often says, “We aim to let machines do the machine work, so people can focus on the people work.”

To get specific on the biggest opportunities, aside from optimizing the back office, I see that as coming in the form of helping people obtain mortgages faster. The writing is on the wall for the realm of underwriting. Because it is such an important part of our industry, its optimization will be a highly scrutinized and reviewed process, but AI is a natural assistant waiting to benefit underwriters everywhere. The paradigm of underwriting is extremely data-driven and extremely repetitive; these are perfect factors for AI to make optimal; it would just have to be done with a great deal of human oversight. Moreover, because underwriting is such a fundamental aspect of our business, we would never neglect the necessary human oversight required to maintain its standard of excellence. We will be looking at different tools that we can bring in to assist the underwriters in making decisions faster, which is a win for the borrower, the broker, and the investor.

What advice would you give to those who work with AI daily and those who don’t?

Most professionals have already lived through several major technological revolutions, like the integration of personal computers, the internet, and mobile devices. Each development transformed work from manual to digital and paired human judgment with machine automation. This new wave of AI goes one step further, increasingly proffering “human-in-the-loop” systems where machines execute while humans supervise.

In the early days of office computing, expertise was concentrated in a few individuals who knew how to use new tools. Today, those skills are universal. A similar shift is now underway with AI. As routine tasks become automated, professionals must focus on upskilling and reskilling, learning to extend their capabilities rather than replace them. Those who take the time to master the new tools will give themselves an incredible advantage in the years to come.

One such example is that, even in the past few years, coders were necessary to develop any technical aspect of a business, from CRM’s to apps to websites. Now, no-code tools are accelerating this transition, allowing individuals to build and automate workflows themselves. Work will increasingly shift from execution to oversight, where humans are managing systems and agents rather than performing each step manually. In this environment, the most valuable skill is not technical mastery alone, but the ability to adapt and learn quickly. It sounds like a cliché, but open-mindedness will be the make-or-break for many professionals, determining if you ride the wave or get crushed in the break.

Ryley, thank you. This has been so interesting. To wrap up, is there anything else interesting to you that springs to mind and you want to mention?

When you look at the changes or results generated by AI on a monthly basis, it’s not incremental. It is absolutely massive, and while it is very hard to try and keep up with the change, it is also very exciting. For example, we recently had a team member get a data analysis task done in a couple of hours in Excel that would have normally taken them a day or longer. That’s a big win!

On a regular basis, what you thought couldn’t be done before seems to change before our eyes. So, we just keep asking ourselves how we are going to work with this responsibly and make it our advantage.