- 6 weeks ago
Artificial intelligence has quickly become the most talked-about technology in mortgage lending, but there are questions on where it actually delivers value. In this HousingWire conversation, Nima Ghamsari, Founder and Head of Blend sits down with HousingWire’s Allison LaForgia to unpack where AI is truly reshaping the mortgage origination process and where adoption still has a long way to go.
Ghamsari explains how AI agents can move beyond simple automation to handle complex workflows across the lending lifecycle. The conversation also explores Blend’s newly launched Autopilot, what it does differently from traditional rules-based automation, how lenders implement it, and why Ghamsari believes this is just the beginning of a larger shift in how mortgage operations will run in the years ahead.
Ghamsari explains how AI agents can move beyond simple automation to handle complex workflows across the lending lifecycle. The conversation also explores Blend’s newly launched Autopilot, what it does differently from traditional rules-based automation, how lenders implement it, and why Ghamsari believes this is just the beginning of a larger shift in how mortgage operations will run in the years ahead.
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00:06I'm Alison LaForgia from Las Vegas, Nevada, and I am sitting with Nima Gamsari, the founder and
00:13head of Blend. Nima, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. So over the
00:18last year, everybody has been talking about AI. It's all over the industry. Where do you see AI
00:25reshaping, origination, and where do you think lenders are right now with adoption?
00:32Let's start with the second question first. I think AI has evolved so quickly, even in the last four
00:38months, that most lenders, and we work with a couple hundred lenders across the country,
00:44are just not really there yet. And it's not there. I mean, the industry is shaped so quickly,
00:50but it's also a golden opportunity because they do spend hundreds or thousands of dollars per file
00:55reviewing documents and doing stare and compare and all those things. But I don't like to,
01:01when I talk to our lenders, our customers about this, I don't like to talk about
01:04becoming AI native. I like to talk about becoming agent first. And the distinction of being agent
01:09first to me is instead of humans taking the first pass of the stare and compare and then running it
01:15by an agent or jumping in their computer to send it to an agent, we want the agents to be
01:21listening
01:21and watching behind the scenes and doing a first pass before a human even touches it. So by the time
01:26it gets to a human, it's already really ticked and tied. And so that's been a big focus for us,
01:32making our customers agent first, because they do spend too much time and too much money reading
01:37documents, requesting documents, calculating income, finding information, and it's just a waste of their energy.
01:44Now, there is a lot of debate over where AI fits in the mortgage tech stack. Where do you think
01:50AI
01:51agents create the most leverage and why? I'd say our focus right now at Blend with Autopilot
01:59is to make it so that the underwriters and processors and the consumer are 100x more efficient. And what that
02:08means for the consumer is the first time they show up as they're going through the process, it's
02:12dynamically understanding what they need. And then as they provide those things, if new things are
02:17discovered, providing that to the consumer and understanding the file in real time so that they're
02:22able to get through it in one 30-minute setting instead of five 20-minute settings. So that's for
02:28the consumer. For the processors and underwriters, same thing. By the time that they get a file,
02:32we want everything the consumer's done to be fully underwritten, show up in a nice report for them so they
02:36can say, yeah, this, you know, Nima's good on his mortgage and we already have his income verified,
02:40his assets, his credit. And so by the time they get it, it's a 20-30-minute exercise as opposed
02:46to a
02:46multi-hour exercise with four or five iterations they have to do when they find new things. Instead
02:51of going back to the customer, it's already been done by the AI agents. You just mentioned Blend's
02:57launch of Autopilot. Congratulations. But I want to dig in a little bit more about what it actually is and
03:03what it does. Sure. So it's really simple. Like I said, I want to have our customers be agent first.
03:10And so it's ambient agents, agents that are working in the background as the consumer's entering any
03:16data field, as they're uploading any document, Autopilot's reading it, understanding it,
03:22underwriting against the guidelines and other fraud and other kinds of things that have to be checked,
03:26regulatory things. And in the end, what that means is the consumers get a perfectly tailored,
03:32hyper-personalized needs list and experience for their specific situation. And what the underwriter
03:39gets is a fully underwritten file with a nice summary of all the work the agent did while they
03:43were sleeping. It's super simple. It's working in the background to make their lives a hundred times
03:48more efficient. I want to dig in a little bit more with Autopilot. And can you walk me through how
03:55that's different from rules-based automation? Sure. Yeah. So we've been building Blend for 12
04:01years now. And our first take towards this problem 12 years ago, or 10 years ago,
04:07was something called Blend Intelligence, which is exactly what you described as rules-based automation.
04:12We would look for inquiries in the credit report. We would look for large deposits in the bank account,
04:16and we'd be able to do it if we had data. But then we didn't handle any of the two
04:21big distinctions.
04:21We couldn't do it if there was no data. There's too many kinds of bank statements. There's too
04:26many kinds of pay stubs. So if there was no data, we couldn't really apply it. That was the first
04:30thing. And the second thing is that as the rules were being written, we only were able to write them
04:37for the majority cases and not the edge cases. And if you ask any underwriter, they say they spend all
04:41of their time on the edge cases. And that's where Autopilot shifts that on its head and says,
04:46we don't care what kind of document it is. We don't care what kind of data it is. We don't
04:49care
04:49how complex the person's income is. We're going to solve this for you. And it's going to show up on
04:55your desk perfectly cleanly. And just as an example, I ran myself through the normal Blend process,
05:03which is what Autopilot is listening to. And I have pretty complex income. I have multiple K1s. I have
05:09multiple 1099s. I have a small business. And obviously, I get RSUs and things with Blend, shares with Blend.
05:17And it was able to perfectly calculate. I ran it a hundred times to say, is it different?
05:22Oh, it's another important point. Well, you don't want us to have different answers from AI
05:26in different times. You don't want AI to hallucinate. I ran it through a hundred times.
05:29I got the same exact answer from the AI every single time. And it was the exact right answer
05:33against the exact guidelines that are required. And so, for me, that would be a great experience
05:39because I'd know exactly what I'm approved for. And I'd know what the underwriter is going to find
05:44right up front. And for the lender, it's great because reviewing my K1s and 1099s and my small
05:50business tax returns and all those things was going to be a bearer of an effort for them.
05:56Now, this sounds like it could be a lot to get up and running for a lender. What does implementation
06:02actually look like? Well, the nice thing is all of the consumer side documents, at least,
06:09are provided to the lender by the consumer via an upload mechanism or something in Blend already.
06:16So, if they're already going through the process and they're applying for the mortgage
06:20as they normally would in Blend, and then they're uploading their documents, they get their needs
06:24list and it has the W2s and the tax returns and pay stubs and whatever other things that the system
06:29decides or autopilot decides, they don't have to do any... The lender doesn't have to do anything. It just
06:33works behind the scenes. They flip a switch to turn on. They have to obviously want to turn it on.
06:38Right. But once they want to turn it on, it's truly a flip of a switch for them.
06:42And this is one of the first products that we've launched in that way, if not the first product.
06:50And we wanted to make it really easy to adopt, really easy to try.
06:55We're giving it away for three months during this preview period just to let people try it,
06:59because it's so hard to understand how is this even possible, even for me.
07:03Until you have it running.
07:04Until you have it running and then you see yourself going through the process or you test it with a
07:07real
07:08borrower situation that you've run into that's cost you a bunch of time and energy.
07:11And you're like, wow, this AI stuff, these agents actually do work.
07:17So we wanted to make it as easy as possible because there's too many other things going
07:21on in the world. There's a war going on. There's all sorts of things going on that people want to
07:27make things as easy as possible for our customers.
07:30So you just mentioned how it can be a little hard to understand how you're going to use it
07:35unless you're already in it. Talk to me a little bit about the reactions that you've already seen
07:40from lenders and customers who've already seen Autopilot in action.
07:45Yeah, sure. Actually, I'd say it started with our customer advisory board, which we do twice a year.
07:51And we had it about a month ago, mid-Feb. And we had our customers there and they were
07:59asking about it. We were demoing it and they're asking about it and their eyes kind of lit up.
08:03And they were like, wait, so this will fully underwrite the file without my people having
08:07to touch it? And it'll show up on my people's desk with something they can react to?
08:11I'm like, yeah, that's how it works. And then in early March, we made it available and customers,
08:19people were skeptical that lenders would just turn this on. We had seven large customers turn
08:24this on in the first week without even calling us. Just turn it on in their environment, try it.
08:30We went live in production very recently. They turned it on in production. It's like
08:34when you make it easy for people to do things, they'll do it. And I think that's kind of the
08:39tricky
08:39thing around AI right now is that there's so much hype around it. And that also leads to a lot
08:45of
08:45noise. Yeah, to your point. And so it's just difficult to make sense of how to actually take
08:53advantage of it. And so anyways, my approach was let's make this as easy as possible for our customers.
08:58And we're seeing them both with their feet. They turn it on and they're like, wow, this is amazing.
09:02And we're paying tons of money underwriting these files. And my team can only do six files a week and
09:06they could probably do 50 files a week with this kind of technology.
09:09So Autopilot sounds amazing. I'm going to ask you for a little bit of a teaser,
09:14a little bit of a preview. Where does this go from here? Is Autopilot the beginning of something
09:19bigger for Blunt? Yeah, you know, I think getting agents involved in the mortgage lending process
09:26is definitely good for underwriting and processing, which is kind of where we've started helping the
09:30underwriters and processors get their work done behind the scenes while they're sleeping,
09:35making them hopefully 100 times more efficient. But I think this should apply to all parts of the
09:41loan process. So as a consumer is going through, if they switch loan products and that leads to
09:46additional things coming up, like they should know that in real time, hey, if you're going to go
09:50and you're going to lower your down payment, we're going to have to add MI.
09:53But something should be telling them that before, you know, at 2am in the morning while they're trying
09:57to work through this file. And so one of the things that's exciting to me is how do we take
10:02this
10:02technology and make it so that every single consumer has a very personalized, very tailored
10:08experience that's generated on the fly for them. And so this concept of generative UI has been around
10:15recently in the last six months or so in the AI world. And it's super powerful because your financial
10:20situation is different than mine. And your questions, the things that scare you, I'm a first
10:24time home buyer, maybe you're not, you've been through the process a few times, maybe your process is
10:28a little bit less guided because you've already been through it and you're like, hey, I just want to
10:31just tell me what I need and provide it. But for me, I want to be walked through. Hey, if
10:35you had
10:35$2,000 more in down payment, that would lower your rate a little bit more because that gets you into
10:39a lower rate band for us. And so those kinds of things can be dynamically generated on the fly.
10:44Now, it wasn't possible. That's where humans actually were doing a great job. And now the same humans
10:49can be, you know, 10 or 100 times more efficient.
10:51That's amazing. Something that we talk a lot about at HousingWire is how each borrower is really
10:58different. Even if you have different institutional investors, somebody buying their first time home,
11:03somebody buying their second home, wherever the transaction is, everybody's a different profile.
11:07So having a technology that assists you in meeting them where they're at is so critical in an age where
11:14we have such high expectations for customer service.
11:17Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And by the way, it's critical for the customer experience,
11:22but it's also critical, you know, for a lender, I think, because one, you want to give them that
11:26level of service. But that's a customer who wants to do business with you, right? And you might lose
11:31them, they might be on the hook, and you might lose them because of something you didn't tell them
11:34that someone else tells them. And so I think being able to provide that really tailored experience is
11:40everyone's dream. It's just that doing, you know, millions of phone conversations or meetings with consumers
11:46doesn't scale. Absolutely. And, you know, it doesn't mean you don't want to have a human touch.
11:50I think humans who want to have a human touch should always have that ability to have a human touch
11:54in such a big life process. But we shouldn't force people down the path of, well, if you want to
11:59work
12:00with us, you have to schedule a time in two weeks, right? Like that's, I think that that world is
12:04sort
12:04of going away and people are self-serving, whether it's dog veterinary care or whatever it is
12:09on ChatTBT, they don't just call their vet first, you know, they're just finding ways to help themselves where they
12:14can.
12:14Well, Nima, thank you so much for sitting with me today. Congratulations on the launch of Autopilot,
12:19and I can't wait to see what's next for Blend.
12:21Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me.
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