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MortgagePoint » Your Trusted Source for Mortgage Banking and Servicing News 20 August 2025 F E A T U R E S T O R Y HOW TO COMBAT LOAN APPLICATION ABANDONMENT Borrowers start the journey to homeownership with clear intent—but somewhere between application start and submission—they run into friction, confusion, and a lack of immediate support … and then they're gone. B y DA N M I C H A E L I A s the homebuying season gains momentum, lenders face a quiet but costly threat: loan application abandonment. When every relationship is hard-won and every closing counts, watching prospective borrowers vanish mid-application is a bitter missed opportunity. Increasingly, lenders are trying to use artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools to intervene at just the right moment—offering real-time support and reducing friction before it drives customers away. But the abandonment numbers are sobering. Despite improved digital plat- forms and record-level interest in online mortgage tools, around 68% of online loan applications are abandoned—usu- ally due to poor customer interactions— and about 48% of consumers who expe- rience digital friction take their business elsewhere. Borrowers start the journey with clear intent—but somewhere be- tween application start and submission, they run into friction, confusion, and a lack of immediate support … and then they're gone. For every abandoned application, there's a lost revenue opportunity and a disappointed potential borrower. But while the problem is easy to see, it's harder to solve. Why? Because it lies at the nebulous intersection of digital experience, customer support, and organizational readiness. Lenders are in dire need of more intelligent, context-aware, and person- alized ways to support borrowers within the mortgage application process. Creat- ing a program with that kind of support requires reimagining what support looks like in a digital-first environment. Reasons for Abandonment M ortgage technology has come a long way. Online applications are faster, sleeker, and more secure than ever. The real issue is not an unpolished interface—it's that borrowers abandon applications when the process becomes too complex for them to handle without guidance. The loan process—despite being digital—still carries the complexity of its analog predecessor. It is filled with financial jargon, unfamiliar document requirements, and high-stakes deci- sions. When borrowers get stuck, they need help right then and there. And too often, they are met with unresponsive chatbots, slow email replies, or a prompt to call a service line and have to start from scratch. It's a fractured experience, split into disconnected parts: chat windows, email threads, follow-up calls. It's support that looks digital but feels unnatural. And borrowers who expect real-time answers and seamless transitions lose patience. What Customers Truly Want I n trying to make processes fully digital, lenders have inadvertently in- troduced new roadblocks. The future of lending support must elegantly combine the strengths of humans and emerging technology to create a model of support that's smarter, faster, and more intuitive than either could offer alone. D A N M I C H A E L I is Co-Founder and CEO of Glia, a customer interactions platform for industries where trust, security, and relationships are everything. Glia has been named a Deloitte Technology Fast 500 company for five consecutive years and is certified as a "Great Place to Work" (with a 98% employee satisfaction rating).