Better’s new ChatGPT app targets lenders Rocket and UWM

Online mortgage platform better CNBC has partnered with OpenAI to launch an app within ChatGPT that the companies said will significantly reduce the time it takes to underwrite a mortgage or home equity loan, CNBC has learned exclusively.

The app, which will be announced later Thursday, takes Better’s mortgage engine and combines it with OpenAI models to speed up the underwriting process for loan officers working at banks, mortgage brokers and fintech companies, Better CEO Vishal Garg said in an interview.

“Taking the mortgage underwriting process, which many of us have personally experienced, from 21 days to less than 47 seconds and enabling it via ChatGPT is a huge eye-opener for everyone,” Giancarlo Leonetti, chief commercial officer at OpenAI, said in a statement provided to CNBC. “OpenAI is proud to partner with Better to build technology that revolutionizes the mortgage industry and makes financing their home cheaper, faster and easier for American families.”

For decades, mortgage origination has been one of the most time-consuming corners of American finance, with lenders relying on dozens of steps that can take weeks to complete. After the 2008 financial crisis, big banks wanted it JPMorgan Chase has receded from the US mortgage market, leading to the rise of non-bank players including Rocket mortgage and United Wholesale Mortgage.

Now, in an era in which leading AI companies are targeting inefficiencies in the corporate landscape, AI agents could reshape the U.S. home loan market that produces more than $1 trillion in mortgage loans annually.

The new app is part of Better’s pivot from being primarily a consumer lender to also becoming a “mortgage-as-a-service” technology platform for other mortgage operators, Garg said.

The companies are directly targeting dominant mortgage companies by enabling competitors to move faster, Garg said. According to Better, lenders can save 21 days of time on average, reducing loan underwriting costs and ultimately saving consumers money as well.

“AI is now doing mortgages,” Garg said. “Rocket, UWM and Pennymac, a group of large public companies, make their money by charging a 1.5% tax on mortgage underwriting…. That’s $20 billion paid by the American public in a typical year.”

OpenAI’s models, which are fed with Better’s mortgage data, save time by simultaneously running parallel workflows on dozens of checkpoints, including appraisals, property and income reports, credit reports and other metrics, Garg said.

“It’s not a simple tool call. It’s a multiple tool call with a very long, spanning logical tree and a very large context window,” Garg said.