Nov. 14: Thoughts on HELOCs and AI, on the election results, on John Grisham; compliance notes; Saturday Spotlight: Finance of America

If you think that there is no way to spark the mortgage business, you’re probably wrong. For an illustration from another industry, let’s look at motorcycles: how often do you need one? I have toured its museum in Milwaukee, which is cool, and while sales volume for Harley-Davidson is down to 132,535 motorcycles last year, down from the sales peak of 344,000 bikes in 2006, the company has managed to face unfavorable demographic and economic headwinds relatively well. Despite an aging fandom and the kind of interest rates and gas prices that make one reconsider spending $46,000 on a bike, globally, sales are up four percent so far this year. With new models designed for the European market, as well as three-wheeled “trikes” that are squarely aimed at the affluent but older Harley-Davidson faithful that perhaps has lost a bit too much dexterity to manage a two-wheeled motorcycle, Harley has defied expectations. Lenders are rolling out “new models” as well, especially reverse, and non-Agency products.

Saturday Spotlight: Finance of America

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Business growth is harder when you’re missing half the pie

Purchase and refinance lending aren’t going anywhere. But waiting for those markets to fully rebound isn’t much of a growth strategy. Not when there’s a massive slice of opportunity among the growing senior demographic.

Consider the scale: U.S. homeowners hold approximately $34.9 trillion in real estate equity1, with more than $14.5 trillion held by homeowners age 62+2. But the size of home equity isn’t the whole story for seniors.

As homeowners enter retirement, their income, liquidity, and financial priorities may change. Meeting those needs might require rethinking your strategy. Serving older clients throughout the homeowner lifecycle requires a broader toolkit, including products like reverse mortgages.

Building that expertise takes work. Reverse mortgages come with new rules, processes, and borrower conversations. But growth doesn’t come from standing still. And the learning curve could become your advantage. Mortgage professionals who start now have time to develop capabilities that could set them apart as competition grows.

If you’re ready to grab a bigger slice of the pie, you don’t have to do it alone. Finance of America, one of America’s largest senior home equity lenders, brings more than 20 years of experience helping traditional mortgage professionals enter the category with education, tools, and operational support.

Their new white paper with HousingWire, “Growth is hard: why standing still is the biggest risk facing mortgage originators,” lays out the business case for building expertise now, before market pressure forces your hand.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Why waiting for “normal” is a risky strategy: Purchase and refi remain foundational, but relying on their recovery leaves your growth tied to rates, inventory, and other factors you can’t control.

Why the learning curve is a competitive advantage: Building product knowledge, referral relationships, and operational fluency now could help you stay ahead as demand grows.

Why your client relationships shouldn’t end at purchase: A broader home equity strategy could help you remain relevant as clients’ needs evolve, from buying and improving a home to preparing for retirement and funding later-life priorities.

You could wait for the familiar market to get easier. But first, ask yourself: Are you missing half the pie? [Get the white paper]

1 Households; Owners’ Equity in Real Estate, Level, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 6/11/26

2 Senior Housing Wealth Remains Largely Stable in Q4 2025, NRMLA, 4/10/26

(For more information on having your firm’s extracurricular activities, employee growth, and your charitable side featured, contact Chrisman LLC’s Anjelica Nixt.) 

Thoughts on the election

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As an industry, residential lending is squarely, take your pick, in sync/in the crosshairs/influenced by… politics. The general consensus is that the Democratic party’s avalanche (every statewide contest was lost by Republicans) was a rebuttal to President Trump’s handling of certain issues and behavior, and not necessarily a mandate to carry out “woke” activities again. We’ll see…

I received this note from a well-known mortgage executive about the election and its results. “Given Elon Musk’s spending in Texas, we were, fortunately, reminded that you can’t buy votes, and elsewhere that you can’t re-jigger voting areas through gerrymandering to win an election and that fears of widespread fraud turned out to not be the case. It is a good thing for democracy.

“With 100+ new members of Congress, the state and national MBA associations will be busy educating ‘the rookies.’ My guess is that the organizations will work on furthering the existing executive orders but also looking at them critically. The risk of things like private mortgage insurance changes must be weighed versus the benefits of the system now.

“Your readers should keep things in perspective. Midterm elections nearly always flip the majority and minority, but what was unusual was the depth of the voter-driven changes. Progressive policies will be seen in CRA efforts and AI monitoring. Most lame duck sessions are slow, but right from the start we could be facing a government shutdown. Attendance may be off; being on their jobs is mandated, but there is no meaningful punishment for not coming to Washington.

“We’ll be hearing from Elizabeth Warren and Maxine Waters again, and a lot of energy spent on investigations and impeachments. Congresss should vote on the head of the CFPB and FHA Commissioner. Housing affordability, partial claims, oversight of HUD and FHFA, CFPB, and banking regulators are all things we can expect to see. The one thing we probably won’t see is a GSE release from conservatorship: no one wants to roil the secondary markets.”

Compliance… not to be forgotten

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You can make your GC your compliance officer, but it’s easier to change a hat than what’s under it when obligations of candor to regulators bump into legal duties. Brian Levy’s latest Mortgage Musings Substack titled “You Can Leave Your Hat On” explores these topics and more.

MQMR Research writes that, “Section 314(b) of the USA PATRIOT Act permits, but does not require, financial institutions (including BSA-covered mortgage companies) to securely share information with one another to identify and report potential money laundering, fraud, or terrorist financing. However, this authority does not allow institutions to share SARs or disclose that a SAR has been filed, although institutions may file SARs jointly. Subject to secure handling, 314(b) generally does not limit the types or methods of information sharing; institutions may exchange transaction data, surveillance footage, cyber and device information, account-opening or closure decisions, monitoring alerts, and other indicators of potentially suspicious activity, either verbally, in writing, electronically, or through groups of participating institutions. Because participation is voluntary, banks, credit unions, and mortgage companies should ensure their written AML policies clearly address 314(b) sharing, including whether the institution participates in the program and how that sharing is conducted.

Fannie Mae’s Day 1 Certainty program allows lenders to streamline mortgage underwriting through Desktop Underwriter (DU) by using authorized third-party vendors to electronically verify borrower income, employment, assets, and property information. By replacing manual documentation with validated electronic data, the program can reduce paperwork, accelerate loan approvals, help prevent fraud, and provide lenders with representation and warranty relief on eligible validated information.

Cybersecurity awareness training for bank employees is critically important because banks are prime targets for cyberattacks due to the sensitive financial data they handle. Proper training programs establish the foundation for a sound culture of cyber awareness throughout the institution and can counter inherent weaknesses in human interaction with computers and data. Human error has been cited as a contributing factor in 95 percent of all cyber incidents that occurred in 2024. Training helps to strengthen the overall quality of our defenses against cyber threats. 

Artificial Intelligence and home equity: work against it or with it

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Michael Tannenbaum, CEO of Figure, has thoughts on lender trends that he’s seeing in residential lending. “Since the beginning of the internet, there have been options to remove the salesperson, and yet the vast majority of people still want a wealth advisor, a stockbroker, or an insurance broker. You’ve been able to get an insurance policy without a broker for years, and you’ve been able to use a robo advisor like Wealthfront for years. Those roles haven’t changed despite the technology. It doesn’t surprise us that in the next wave of technology, people are still looking for some level of advice and guidance, especially in what is almost always the top or among the top financial transactions of their lives. The opportunity is to empower loan officers to focus on sales and not waste their time telling somebody how a HELOC works.

“There’s a bit of a quiet crisis within mortgage of loan abandonment. Leads are precious right now, and originators especially want to make sure the leads that come in get closed, because it’s a more difficult environment. HELOC is one of the growth areas, which makes every stalled application a bigger loss.

“Lenders are really concerned with how to use AI to make a difference in their business, and so many vendors are saying they have this AI or that bot. A lot of AI is about volume. When the cost to produce intelligence, words, or voice goes down, because it’s the AI’s time and not yours, the quantity goes up, and quantity isn’t necessarily quality. That’s the concept of slop, and we see it all over LinkedIn. The optimization worth driving is conversion.

“AI agents have infinite patience. A 40-minute conversation that’s mostly dead air, while the borrower digs around for an ID, is work we don’t want to pay a person to do. A person doesn’t want to do it either. It’s maddening, but the AI agent is happy to do it. That leaves loan officers free to sell and to find the best opportunities for their clients. They can be talking only to borrowers who are warm and ready to go, with no voicemails and no outbound calls, and they still get their commissions and do their business.

“The best performance comes from the loan officer and the AI working together. If the loan officer didn’t perform, we’d have to rethink what we were doing. Truthfully, adding a loan officer makes it a little bit better. Adding the loan officer and AI together makes it a lot better.” Thank you, Michael.

Keynova’s Beth Robertson states, “Speedier home equity applications are becoming more common, and the number of organizations offering them has doubled since last year. That isn’t yet a significant number, but it’s definitely expanding. A lot more non-banks are offering home equity products, and most of the banks that pulled out of home equity during the pandemic are generally re-entering, with Wells Fargo the exception. More lenders want the home equity borrower, yet a lot of their digital application flows still look very much like the paper form we’d fill out by hand. The leaders show how far an application can move from that form.

“Bank of America and PNC, tied for first overall in Keynova’s 2026 Mortgage Home Equity Scorecard for the second year in a row, both do a lot of things nobody else is doing. The one thing they share that most organizations don’t is real-time prequalification paired with detailed information on costs, including closing costs and calculations for various loan types. Those are the answers speed is supposed to deliver.

“PNC’s Home Insight Planner lets borrowers develop a budget, search for a property, and build scenarios with different price points, interest rates, and points values. PNC pairs those tools with very strong educational resources, including videos, articles, and calculators. A lot of people just don’t know much about the home buying and home lending process, and content like that takes a complex topic and breaks it into bite-sized components. With a video, you’re seeing it and hearing it, so you’re better able to integrate that information into your everyday thinking.

“At Bank of America, when you apply for a mortgage or home equity, the status tool is integrated into online banking. An existing customer is already there and familiar with the interface, and can move easily into their loan information or back into anything else they want to manage while logged on. Taken as a group, Bank of America’s support features are also better than what many offer: live chat, Erica on the app to help with mobile mortgage and home equity questions, and contextual appointment setting.

“A very smooth application and funding experience immediately gives a consumer a better perspective of the organization they’re borrowing with. For lenders that also service, the efficiency, the type of information, and the whole servicing experience can be important too. A lot of banks and some non-bank lenders have programs that reward existing customers, such as a discount on a mortgage or home equity rate based on the balances carried in other areas, or credit card rewards earnings tied to the other accounts a customer holds. Bank of America’s integrated status tool is a good way to cross-sell, exposing borrowers to a very extensive rewards program that encourages people to hold multiple products and higher balances.

“Those paper-like application flows need to/will continue to evolve. There will be much more pre-filling of known information when someone is already a customer of the lender, along with more transparent use of third-party data. Right now, there are places where a consumer can enter credentials to pull in information like asset balances, but a lot of that information could be accessed in other ways, and property information can come from third-party data without the customer ever being asked for it. I think we’ll see a lot less requirement for the consumer to enter information, and the flows will be much more accelerated. On the back end, I think the process is going to become a lot more streamlined, and probably a big piece of that will be integrating AI into underwriting flows. Consumer expectations about speed are really changing. We’re not in the paper-based world anymore.” Thank you, Beth.

In place of the usual humor, today we have a tale about not giving up…

John Ray Grisham Jr. was born on February 8, 1955, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the son of a construction worker and a homemaker. He grew up in rural northern Mississippi dreaming of one thing: playing professional baseball. Books were not part of the plan. Writing was not part of the plan. None of the plans held.

He made his way through a community college (failing English along the way) then Delta State University, then Mississippi State, where he earned an accounting degree. Law school followed at the University of Mississippi, graduating 1981. By 1983 he was doing two demanding things simultaneously: practicing as a trial attorney and serving in the Mississippi House of Representatives. He had a young family, a full case load, and a legislative calendar.

Then, in 1984, he witnessed a trial that wouldn’t let him go. A young girl took the stand and described being raped. The courtroom was silent. The jury wept. Grisham found his mind circling a single question he couldn’t put down: what would happen if the girl’s father had killed her attackers?

He had never written a novel. He had never tried. He started setting his alarm for five in the morning. For three years he rose before dawn, wrote for a few hours, then drove to work. He handled cases. He attended legislative sessions. He came home. He slept and did it again. He was writing a legal thriller about a Black man in Mississippi who murders the two men who raped his ten-year-old daughter, and the young white lawyer who agrees to defend him. It was set in a world Grisham knew in his bones: the small-town courtrooms, the racial fault lines, the specific gap between the law as written and justice as actually delivered.

He finished it in 1987. He called it A Time to Kill. Twenty-eight publishers said no. The twenty-ninth said yes… a small press, which agreed to print five thousand copies. For a novel that had cost three years of five-in-the-morning mornings. That every significant publisher in New York had passed on. That Grisham had written while managing a law practice and a legislative term simultaneously.

Five thousand copies were printed. They couldn’t be given away. He loaded boxes into his car and drove to libraries and bookstores across Mississippi, selling them one at a time by hand. He made the rounds to thirty-five libraries. He kept writing. The day after finishing A Time to Kill, he had already started the next one.

His second novel was about a young attorney lured to an apparently perfect law firm with a very dark secret. He called it The Firm. Something remarkable happened before it even found a publisher: He was paid $600,000 for the film rights.

The publishers who had passed on his first book suddenly wanted to meet. Doubleday signed him… Doubleday, which had been among the twenty-eight that said no. The Firm became the bestselling novel of 1991. The 1993 film starred Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman. A Time to Kill, the book nobody had wanted, the one Grisham had hand-delivered to rural Mississippi libraries, was republished and sold over one and a half million copies.

He closed his law practice and went to Oxford, Mississippi, to write full time. The Pelican Brief took him 100 days. The Client took six months. Both became major films. The Rainmaker was adapted by Francis Ford Coppola.

He never forgot what had started everything. The man who had first sat in a courtroom in 1984 and couldn’t shake a question about justice is still, at seventy, working toward the same thing. He has long supported the Innocence Project, which uses DNA evidence to exonerate the wrongly convicted: people whose stories look, in some ways, like the ones he has spent his career writing about.

He also still supports youth baseball. The boy from Jonesboro who once dreamed of going professional never entirely let that go.

The five o’clock alarm still sounds like a beginning.

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(Market data provided in partnership with MBS Live. For free job postings and to view candidate resumes, visit the Chrisman Job Board. This newsletter is intended for sophisticated mortgage professionals only. There are no paid endorsements by me. For the latest mortgage news, visit Mortgage News Daily. For archived commentaries, or to subscribe, go to www.ChrismanCommentary.com. Copyright 2026 Chrisman LLC. All rights reserved. Paid job & product listings do appear. This report or any portion hereof may not be reprinted, sold, or redistributed without the written consent of Rob Chrisman. The views and opinions in this newsletter are mine alone unless otherwise specifically stated herein.)