Limitation of financial programs, complexity in the lending processes and unwillingness of many lenders to invest time and resources in potential customers with non-traditional financial circumstances is a major obstacle to affordable housing in the underserved communities. Pavan Agarwal, CEO and founder of Sun West’s technology division, Celligence™, has made a commitment to meeting these issues of inequality head on. “Technology is the ultimate equalizer and universally levels the field. The aim of our technology is to achieve true unbiased fair lending. In today’s fluctuating and unpredictable rate environment sellers many times reject strong offers due to low down payment and FHA/VA/USDA loan approval contingencies.”
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Sun West have used what they refer to as Empathetic Technology to create two tools to achieve ubiquitous Fair Lending. TRU Approval® empowers lower-income borrowers with the ability to present offers that are often respected as equal to or even better than cash offers. The second is Morgan™–technology based on Artificial Intelligence. These products are already helping people achieve their dream of home ownership with recent results showing some 65% of TRU Approvals® were for traditionally lower-income and lower down-payment FHA/VA/USDA loans. 53% of TRU Approvals® were for borrowers with credit scores at 680 or less and 22% of TRU Approvals® were for borrowers with credit scores at 620 less. Mr. Agarwal said, “Our approach has filled a real need in the home-buying market. In fact, 33% of Sun West’s new loan applications were TRU Approved® and with the precision of the AI technology in Morgan’s brain we have been able to honor every TRU Approval® in a highly competitive and turbulent environment.”
Other remarkable performance metrics achieved with Morgan™ were 99% of the thousands of loan conditions that Sun West receives daily were reviewed within two hours and over 30% of those conditions received were reviewed in only 30 minutes. So, over 99.5% of Sun West’s new applications submissions are Thoroughly Reviewed and Underwritten by 8am the next business day. Mr. Agarwal explained how this was achieved, “At any time during the day, a loan originator simply hands the documents and supporting information of the borrower into securely to Morgan. Our AI engine will OCR the provided information and intelligently construct the loan file. While this is being done the system is performing most of the processing functions that are normally done manually. This allows us to not only streamline the entire review of the file, but also takes out any manual delays and cost overruns that are a common hindrance to loan approval for underserved communities.”
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While the Sun West team is proud of Celligence’s real world performance, they are even more excited for the launch of the next iteration of the technology. Through Morgan™ borrowers will be able to communicate with any part of the firm (from underwriting to closing to loan servicing) in the language of their preference. Within the next 90 days Sun West’s goal is Instant Underwriting™ where any document that is given to Morgan™ will be reviewed and addressed in under 30 minutes. Sun West has already introduced multilingual Touchless Closings™. In a Touchless Closing™, the loan documents are automatically generated and delivered to the closing table within six hours of the final loan condition being given to Morgan.
Borrowers in underserved communities deserve the opportunity to present their offers to sellers with pride and confidence just like buyers in high-income brackets. “As the Home of Fair Lending™, we are delivering this level of service equally, across borrower demographics. We will continue to invest in the creation of transformative technology that will make low-cost financing more accessible and equal than ever before. The introduction of key technologies like multilingual Morgan™, Instant Underwriting™, and Touchless Closings™ has torn down barriers to homeownership. These initiatives make Sun West the Home of Fair Lending,” said Pavan Agarwal.
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