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MortgagePoint » Your Trusted Source for Mortgage Banking and Servicing News 30 June 2025 F E A T U R E S T O R Y FROM DAYS TO MINUTES: HOW AI IS TRANSFORMING MORTGAGE PREQUALIFICATION AI adoption has not only become a time-saving mechanism, but it is enabling faster pre-approvals with greater confidence. B y J A Y E N D R A N G S M ortgage lending stands at a critical inflection point. Despite decades of tech- nological advancement, prequalification remains the industry's most persistent bottleneck. Manual verification cycles create frustration for borrowers, operational inefficiency for lenders, and artificial constraints on market growth. The prequalification process hasn't just resisted improve- ment—it's actively limiting what's possible in lending. Analyses of thousands of lending workflows reveal a common barrier: operational constraints that prevent scaling without proportional increases in headcount. Nowhere is this clearer than in non-QM lending, where com- plex income verification creates an arti- ficial ceiling on capacity and ultimately market expansion. The question is not whether artificial intelligence (AI) can improve this process. The question is why the industry has waited so long to reimagine prequalification from the ground up. The Upfront Revolution: Certainty From the Start T raditional mortgage lending has a unique complication. When lenders need confidence most (at the beginning), they have the least amount of information. Certainty increases as applications progress, but only after significant resource investment. This backward model creates ineffi- ciency, as lenders sometimes spend days processing applications that ultimately fail verification. Resources are wasted that could serve qualified borrowers. What if we could invert this model entirely? Upfront verification fundamental- ly changes the lending equation. By front-loading intelligence to the earliest borrower interaction, a new paradigm is created where certainty exists from the first conversation. The technology delivers the same depth of analysis at prequalification that traditionally hap- pened weeks later—representing not just faster processing, but a fundamen- tally different approach to lending. Upfront Certainty: The New Standard M ost mortgage professionals are familiar with Fannie Mae's Day 1 Certainty program that helps confirm property values. But what the industry truly needs is Upfront Certainty—the ability to analyze and report borrower creditworthiness the moment a loan application is received. In today's challenging lending envi- ronment, borrower income certainty is not a luxury but an absolute necessity. Three key factors make this critical: • Economic challenges have increased the risk profile of potential borrow- ers • Stricter lending guidelines from financial institutions demand more thorough evaluation • The rise in digital lending has brought sophisticated loan fraud tactics requiring better validation AI-powered platforms now make Upfront Certainty possible by analyzing thousands of transactions across mul- tiple accounts in minutes. The system flags potential document tampering and fraudulent transactions in real-time, en- abling faster pre-approvals with greater confidence. J A Y E N D R A N G S is Co-Founder and CEO of Prudent AI, a tech- nology platform that transforms mortgage operations through advanced income calculation and pre- qualification solutions combining artificial intelligent precision with human expertise.