Better Home & Finance, the parent company of digital lender Better.com, launched its voice-based artificial intelligence loan assistant on Thursday. According to the company, the assistant provides customers with “timely and accurate answers.”  

The AI loan assistant, dubbed Betsy, was built through Tinman, the company’s proprietary loan origination platform, where information and facts on loan applications are stored. Better began partnering with big data firm Palantir in 2022 to develop the platform. 

Better said its new tool communicates with potential and current customers by answering mortgage application questions, verifying outstanding application data and connecting with Tinman in real time.

Vishal Garg, founder and CEO of Better, said in a statement that “fulfilling a mortgage loan is labor-intensive and rules-driven, but Betsy automates the process.” Garg highlighted that the new tool isn’t just another text chatbot or document processing service launched through a traditional CRM or OCR vendor.”

“This is true disruption of the non-licensed tasks performed by armies of traditional customer service reps, loan officers, and processors in the mortgage industry,” Garg added. 

Kevin Ryan, Better’s chief financial officer, said that the average cost to sell and process a mortgage in the U.S. is nearly $9,000. But with Tinman, the company has reduced this by more than 35% due to the automation of time-intensive parts of the process. 

“We believe this technology will significantly drive down our costs further, resulting in lowered rates and superior service for our customers,” Ryan said.  

Executives at Better reset the company amid a shrinking mortgage market, with its workforce declining 92% from 10,400 employees in 2021 to just 820 in 2023. 

But president and chief operating officer Chad Smith told HousingWire recently that the firm plans to hire 40 to 50 licensed LOs each month, with a goal of 1,000 new originators over the next 18 months. Gains in productivity mean fewer additions to operations staff per LO in this lending cycle, he added.

Better claims it has funded more than $100 billion in mortgages since 2016. In September, it rolled out a streamline refinance program through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).

The digital lender posted a net loss of $42.2 million in the second quarter of 2024, an improvement from the previous quarter’s loss of $51.5 million. It originated $962 million in mortgages in the second quarter, up 45% from the previous quarter. Company executives projected funded loan volume to top $1 billion in third-quarter 2024.