For decades, mortgage lending has operated with an artificial divide at its core. Agency lending lived in one world. Non-QM lived in another. Different guidelines, different systems, different mental models. That separation once made sense, largely because the agencies did not buy non-QM loans and had no reason to. But over time, what began as a structural distinction hardened into operational silos, and those silos quietly introduced real costs across the industry. The cost

It is easy to look at the steady drumbeat of floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires and ask whether something fundamentally different is happening or whether we are simply more aware of risks that have always existed. When people talk about once-in-a-century floods arriving every few years, the question is not really theological or political. It is about whether the data supports what our instincts are telling us. And in at least one important way, it does. If you step

The mortgage industry has always been cyclical, but what is unfolding now feels structurally different. Consolidation is no longer just a byproduct of downturns or margin compression; it has become a defining feature of an industry grappling with scale, technology, and shifting consumer expectations. In 2025, this reality became impossible to ignore. Despite a return to modest profitability, roughly 25 basis points for the average independent mortgage bank (IMB), merger and a

By Michele Bodda, President Employer Services, Verification Solutions and Housing at Experian Credit scores feel like a simple thing because we’ve been taught to treat them that way, a three-digit number that opens doors or closes them. But credit scores don’t exist on their own. They are downstream of something far more fundamental: credit data. Without the information in a credit report, there is no score at all. That distinction matters, especially now, as the mortgage ind