For years, a lot of enterprise technology has been built around an idealized vision of how work should happen, not how it actually does. Nowhere is that gap clearer than in mortgage lending. Despite massive investment in software, productivity in core mortgage operations has barely improved over the last seven years. One simple data point says it all: the average fulfillment employee today closes roughly the same number of loans per month as they did in 2018.
There was a brief spike during the refinance boom of 2021 and 2022, but that had more to do with unusually easy loans than better systems. When you strip that out, it forces an uncomfortable question: what has all this technology really been doing?
Much of it has been designed for the “happy path.” Mortgage lending is governed by thousands of pages of investor and agency guidelines. Complexity and exceptions are the norm, not the exception. Yet many tools assume clean, linear workflows. When a loan stays on that ideal path, productivity can look great. The moment it does not, which is most of the time, work falls back to manual reviews, emails, spreadsheets, and workarounds. In practice, exception handling is the job.
Designing technology that actually improves productivity means accepting that reality and building for it. That starts with designing tech where people actually use it. Not in theoretical workflows or polished demos, but in the real environment where work gets done. The screens users keep open. The tabs they jump between. The habits they fall back on when something breaks or escalates. In those moments, people do not experiment. They rely on muscle memory. If your product is not already part of that pattern, it simply will not be used when it matters.
The process to get this right is simple but not easy. Sit with users. Watch them work. See where they hesitate, where they copy and paste, where they abandon automation and go manual. Iterate based on that reality. Then do it again. The challenge is discipline. Idealized design feels faster and more exciting. User driven iteration feels slower. But in practice, it leads to real impact and pulls meaningful innovation forward.
At Truework, this mindset has led to a very practical shift. We spend more time physically with customers, sitting in branch offices and watching how income and employment verification fits into daily workflows. One important insight has been that the most successful customers are not limiting verification to the back office. Top producers are using it themselves, earlier in the process, because clarity upfront helps them move faster and serve borrowers better.
That changes how you build and how you show up. It means being present at sales kickoffs and regional meetings, not just leadership briefings. Some of the most valuable feedback comes from small comments like, “I can’t use this because it doesn’t do one small thing.” Often that thing is easy to fix, but only if you are close enough to hear it.
This closeness matters even more in a crowded market. Two years ago, many lenders did not even think in terms of an income and employment verification platform. They relied on blunt data pulls, large manual teams, and repeated document requests, which frustrated borrowers and inflated costs. Today, more vendors talk about platforms, but the real differentiation is execution.
The next step is not more data. It is better orchestration. Borrowers are not all the same. Some are wage earners. Some are self employed. Some have supplemental income. Different loan types and investor destinations require different information. The system should dynamically decide what to ask for and what not to ask for based on who the borrower is and where the loan is going. From the borrower’s perspective, it should feel simple and personal, even though complex guidelines are being satisfied behind the scenes.
This is where mortgage technology is headed. Buying a home is one of the most important financial moments in a person’s life. Whether the experience is digital or in person, it should feel like the process was built for them. Not faster because corners were cut, but smoother because unnecessary friction was never introduced.
The challenges here are not unique to mortgages. In every mature industry, the easy problems are already solved. What remains are hard problems like behavior change, trust, and incremental improvement. There are no shortcuts; Progress comes from getting a little better every day and finding the small improvements that add up over time.
What drives this work is something everyone recognizes. We are still handed clipboards. We still fill out the same information again and again. We still wait in lines during moments that matter most. Too often, the process feels slow and impersonal, as if no one is really designing it for the person going through it.
Designing technology where work actually happens is about removing those lines. It is about respecting people’s time and stress during critical life events. It may not look like utopian innovation, but it is the kind that actually changes outcomes and finally moves the needle.