The company has developed software to help lenders automate and expedite the process
With Canada’s mortgage market having set a scorching pace in recent years, and many lenders’ volumes at all-time highs, the importance of streamlining the funding process has arguably never been greater.
That’s a mission that mortgage fintech FundMore.ai has taken up with gusto, with the company’s software helping lenders automate each step of the underwriting journey from application right through to funding.
Led by chief executive officer and co-founder Chris Grimes (pictured top), FundMore was established as a solution to the often painfully slow mortgage financing process – offering an automated underwriting system to assist lenders through AI and machine learning.
Speaking with Canadian Mortgage Professional, Grimes said the technology was designed to create a more smooth and efficient experience at both ends of the mortgage transaction across a variety of organizations from institutional banks down to private lenders.
“We don’t remove underwriters from the process, but we do enhance their decision by coming back to them with a recommendation for an approval, decline, or potentially a further review – but with very clear narratives,” he explained.
“The way we’ve designed the decision engine was to assist at either a branch level or at a centralized underwriting centre so that you’d have consistency across the entire spectrum by making a recommendation, and then giving them all the reasons why that recommendation was [made].”
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The company has focused not just on automating document management but also on consolidating the entire mortgage record into a single consumable platform for auditing, risk and compliance.
It’s also set its sights on due diligence, offering tools that allow conditions and documentation to be automatically validated before that information is fed back into the decision engine.
That means a document such as a pay stub, job letter or NOA can be cross-referenced and confirmed as a legitimate document with the data points that a lender requires validated before the green light is given.
Integration with third-party data providers is another priority for the company, according to Grimes.
“A lot of the POS [point of sale] systems in the market have intelligence built into their solution to validate property information,” he said. “The challenge on the backend is that doesn’t necessarily always translate to the LOS [loan origination software].
“What we’re looking to do is [see]: Can we work with these third-party providers to validate that information? Not necessarily how to read or pull that information again – but check it just to validate that the information is true and hasn’t been changed.”
That’s geared towards an overall end goal of working through each stage of an application in such an efficient manner, Grimes said, that it can be funded within 24 hours.
One of the technology’s key advantages is that it’s fully customizable, allowing users to essentially plug it into their existing ecosystem and use the different modules required.
Each of those is configurable, allowing automations to be created within workflows and either a manual or automated task management process to be run in order to better facilitate a faster decision.
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A vision for the future, meanwhile, is looking into how mortgage points can be consolidated into a smart contract, wrapped up and stored on a blockchain so that relevant parties can have instant access to that information.
“Where the value is in this is, you’re creating an immutable stamp,” Grimes said. “You will have a very clear picture not only on an individual level, but also on a portfolio level… and be able to support banks being able to move uninsurable business, which today is a challenge for a lot of lenders.”
With a discussion around open banking having gathered pace in recent months – not least due to a federal government report last year that appeared to pave the way for its introduction – Grimes said that concept could have a significant impact on Canada’s mortgage space.
That term refers to a process that would allow third-party developers to construct services and apps around a financial institution, which proponents believe would improve and expedite a range of financial processes.
“Open banking will enable a better picture of a borrower,” Grimes said. “It won’t be solely reliant on a credit bureau. What they actually earn, how their income has been processed, how they live their lives on a daily basis, will be the new credit score, being able to access this type of information.
“I think we’ll actually empower the banks to be able to support more borrowers and get more people into homeownership.”
