February 2026 - Page 3 of 5 - Chrisman Commentary

Consolidation, Technology, and the Human Imperative: How the Mortgage Industry Is Quietly Being Remade

Posted on February 10June 4 by Garth Graham

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 acquisition…

Rethinking How We Measure Creditworthiness

Posted on February 10June 4 by Michele Bodda

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 industry finds…

The Human Side of Mortgage

Posted on February 10June 4 by Mosi Gatling

I have been in mortgage long enough to watch communication shift from a nice-to-have skill into a real competitive edge. Buyers today can shop lenders as easily as they shop homes, and many do. Not because the first loan officer failed them on rates or accuracy, but because the experience felt off. It felt pushy instead of helpful, scripted instead of conversational, more like being sold than being guided. That reaction matters, especially with Millennial buyers, who are not just comparing…

Feb. 10: Transaction mgr. job; Servicing, QC, workflow, non-Agency products; LOs using tools effectively; STRATMOR tech survey

Posted on February 10June 4 by Rob Chrisman

“You are allowed to send e-mails to people in prison, as long as you don’t attach a file.” I receive my share of emails every day… Let’s open up the mailbox and see what’s going on. “Rob, thank you for publishing Mike Simmons’ primer on UAD 3.6 . Right now, credit is a hot topic, but I am sure appraisals will ‘have their day in the sun’.” You’re welcome, and in fact tomorrow’s L1 show at 11AM PT features Caleb Stuemky with Connexions, a valuation platform designed for AMCs and mortgage…

Cybersecurity: The Mortgage Industry’s Next Competitive Divide

Posted on February 10June 4 by Denny LeCompte

By Denny LeCompte, CEO of Portnox Money attracts attackers. And where money flows, personal data follows. The mortgage industry shares that risk profile in spades. Few industries combine such high-value transactions with such concentrated personally identifiable information. Examples include: an $800,000 wire transfer sent to the wrong account; a borrower’s data set quietly exfiltrated over months. These are precisely the outcomes attackers design for. And unlike Hollywood-style breaches,…

Vibe Coding, Continued: From Idea to Live Resource in a Single Afternoon

Posted on February 9June 4 by Ethan Vieaux

Two weeks ago, we talked about “vibe coding” as a mindset shift for loan officers. Not learning to code. Not becoming a software company. Simply using modern AI tools to turn plain-English ideas into live, useful resources faster than traditional marketing workflows allow. This week, I want to make it tangible. I built a live consumer-facing page using nothing more than an AI assistant and our CRM. No developer. No design sprint. No long intake process. The goal wasn’t to create a perfect…

Feb. 9: Analytics, servicing, AI, warehouse, doctor products; MBS trends impacting borrower rates: credit scores matter

Posted on February 9June 4 by Rob Chrisman

Late last week my daughter Marie, her two children, and I toured the Ballerina Farms dairy near Park City in Utah. My tech takeaway, as it relates to lenders: there are 150 cows, and two $250,000 robots do the milking machine duties of guiding Bessie, cleaning the udder, using lasers to attach the cups to the teats, pump the milk, weigh it, monitor the butterfat and protein, and bring up the next cow, day after day. That’s automation! Lenders are always analyzing automation for parts of the…

Feb. 7: UAD 3.6 primer… what every lender should know; Flood policy thoughts; Vendor news; Saturday Spotlight: Kastle, the AI platform

Posted on February 9June 4 by Rob Chrisman

“If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.” Lenders can’t. They work with many loans that “try” but don’t work, and have historically unenviable position of passing along costs of loans that don’t fund onto those loans that do. The surest way to lower costs is to increase pull through, and increase fundings to spread out fixed costs. Efficiency! By informal chatter, 2026 is off to a decent start. Sure enough, according to Curinos’ new proprietary application index,…

Affordability and The Administration

Posted on February 7June 4 by Bob Broeksmit

For the past several years, housing affordability has been discussed as if it were a force of nature. Everyone agrees it is a problem, everyone studies it, and yet it often feels beyond reach, like something that can only be changed by sweeping legislation or a dramatic shift in interest rates. What feels different right now is that some of the most immediate levers are not theoretical at all. They are administrative. They do not require Congress, but rather decisions. And that is why debates…

How Purpose-Built AI Agents Are Reshaping Mortgage Lending and Servicing

Posted on February 6June 4 by Rishi Choudhary

Few phrases are circulating the mortgage industry faster right now than “AI agents.” The promise is sweeping: autonomous systems that can talk to borrowers, take action, and materially change how lenders and servicers operate. But as with every major technology wave, the gap between hype and real impact is wide. What separates signal from noise is not ambition, but execution. An AI agent is not just a chatbot or a scripted workflow. It is a non-deterministic system powered by large language…