The rush to embrace and adopt artificial intelligence technology solutions to make mortgage operations faster, better and leaner has primarily focused on operational cost savings. Some lenders are entranced by the vision of the promise of reduced labor costs, increased operational efficiency, and modernization. There is also an inherent concern about competitive disadvantage as lenders see their peers adopting new AI tools where they have none. I have addressed AI regulatory

The F-16 was designed to be aerodynamically unstable. Without fly-by-wire systems making continuous corrections, the aircraft literally could not fly. This instability was not a flaw but a deliberate design choice. An unstable airframe, properly controlled, is extraordinarily agile, always on the edge of chaos, continuously caught by a system that manages motion, not state. The instability is the feature, and it shows. Over half a century since entering service, the F-16 rema

Walk through enough mortgage operations and a pattern emerges: lenders have applied automation with considerable sophistication to the tasks that needed it least, and left the moments that matter most to chance. The result is an experience that feels seamless until it suddenly doesn't. And when it breaks, it breaks at exactly the wrong time. This is not an argument against automation. Under sustained margin compression and declining origination volumes, cost discipline is not

“Friction” has quickly become the mortgage industry’s favorite word, but like most buzzwords, it risks being overused and under examined. Everyone wants to remove it, from origination to capital markets to post-closing, but few stop to ask where it actually lives or why it persists. The reality is that friction is not a singular flaw; it’s the visible output of deeper design issues. It shows up in rising costs to originate, in employee frustration, and in the quiet inefficien