AI Foundry
Actionable Intelligence Empowering Future - Ready Mortgages

In the age of instant information, organizations across all industries must forge a path to digital transformation or risk becoming irrelevant. As a result, it’s no surprise that even historically conservative players such as banks and mortgage companies are going through an “Uber moment” and adopting a slew of new-age technologies to keep up with the demands of an always-connected and customer-centric world. Financial institutions that understand the current digital stakes also have the upper hand when it comes to managing compliance, driving down loan origination costs, and improving overall operational efficiencies and providing that “Uber-like” customer experience. Simply put, digitization is the sure-shot formula to a more competitive, if not winning, lender.

Given the nature of the current market demands, a key enabler helping financial institutions ace their digital transformation journey is AI Foundry. “We are the disruptive force behind future-ready mortgages. We bring an end-to-end, automated approach to loan management from ingesting loan file documents and loan processing, underwriting review, to mortgage post-closing and selling, while efficiently connecting the front and back office operations for a superior customer experience,” begins Stephen Butler, General Manager at AI Foundry. Since cumbersome manual processes and disconnected information silos are the biggest impediments plaguing lending institutions of all sizes, AI Foundry’s state-of-the-art Actionable Intelligence Management (AIM) technology empowers organizations to add actionable intelligence to data, automate intensive tasks, and effectively streamline workflows.

Smarter, Faster, Agile Lending

To draw a broader view, AIM allows organizations to control both structured and unstructured data flowing into organizations every day as it combines cutting-edge technology, expertise, and data science to identify relevant patterns, derive insights, and facilitate decision-making. In the past, banks and mortgage companies have focused on optical character recognition (OCR) technology to capture data but AI Foundry goes a step further with AIM and Butler says, “We are offering a next generation lending platform as opposed to a next generation OCR engine. What we bring to the table is a seamless approach to making data actionable, which enables enterprises to identify, understand, and use their information like never before.”

Powered by AIM, AI Foundry’s Agile Mortgages solution is an RPA-based, customizable offering that utilizes the latest in AI and machine learning to redefine the consumer-driven mortgage experience. Because of variations in loan types, state regulations and mortgage forms, there are 3000-4000 types of mortgage documents across the U.S., which makes classification and extraction of data a challenging task.

What we bring to the table is making data actionable, which enables enterprises to identify, understand, and use their information like never before

As a business unit of Kodak Alaris, AI Foundry has the benefit of hundreds of patents along with expert data scientists for best-in-class document classification and data extraction. With the Agile Mortgages solution, once a document is captured electronically, machine learning and AI capabilities enable the system to classify the document based on the document type and extract data for specific business processes. This truly forms the basis for an exceptional and advanced enterprise information management strategy. For superior accuracy in document classification and extraction, the solution also features a large precompiled mortgage library for instant document recognition and predetermined data fields to extract. “This is a critical component as our loan library significantly reduces implementation time and cost,” says Butler. “And as the system is trained on a new document type, it gets added to our library. We anticipate this library growing quickly over time as we add new customers.”

AI Foundry’s unique value proposition was brought to light when Certainty Home Loans, LLC, a retail mortgage company was looking for a solution to enhance the traditional file flow process ubiquitous in the mortgage industry. With AI Foundry, the client was able to extract key data from across documents, which was automatically populated onto a variety of internal systems, completely eliminating the need for manual data entry. Moreover, since Certainty has a footprint in 13 different states, dealing with the variables in a document posed as a significant problem. AI Foundry’s multiple mechanisms to capture data helped them easily work through the variables such as borrower details or bank statements, analyze documents, and categorize them accordingly.

In another case in point, Evolve Mortgage Services, a prominent provider of outsourced mortgage solutions, reached out to AI Foundry in search of an agile mortgage solution and particularly for a competent data extraction capability. With AI Foundry, Evolve was not only able to achieve digital transformation but also complete end-to-end automation of data capture, classification, and data extraction for loan file documents.

End-to-End Automation

Apart from reducing process-related bottlenecks, the Agile Mortgages solution also provides the ability to validate customer data against internal and external sources and ensures that industry and federal regulations are met. Because the solution includes a prebuilt rules engine, it can easily integrate with the workflow of a particular bank, automating the myriad validation and verification checks required as part of the process.

Since many mortgages will ultimately be sold to either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, who collectively own or insure $4.6 trillion in residential mortgages or 45.9 percent of the market, accurate document classification and data is essential to meet their stringent loan requirements. If a bank sells a mortgage that is not well packaged or if inconsistencies are found, they can incur a massive buyback cost. “Mortgages are all about quality control and assurance and our business rules engine coupled together with our intelligent checklist ensures that all documents are in place, eliminating the risk of non-compliance,” explains Butler.
As a result of AI Foundry’s determination to optimize mortgages, it comes as no surprise that today the company delivers high accuracy rates for classification, separation, and extraction of data from loan file documents. Butler credits a large portion of this success to the team at AI Foundry that comprises experts from all key disciplines. While most AI solution providers in the market have a presence in many verticals, what makes AI Foundry standout is their niche focus on mortgages. “At AI Foundry, we are primarily computer scientists and we have added mortgage specialists to the team. We are not mortgage specialists that are bringing in technologists,” says Butler.

"Mortgages are all about quality control and assurance and our business rules engine features an intelligent checklist which eliminates the risk of non-compliance"

“Moreover, it’s important to understand that we consult first and sell second,” he adds. From demand generation to making a sale, the company makes it a point to gain a clear understanding of the problems at hand and then recommends and builds a solution that maximizes business value. AI Foundry also places customer feedback in high regard and Butler remarks, “We pay keen attention to all customer feedback.” The company doesn’t believe in innovating in quantum jumps but follows a continuous development and innovation cycle, based on client requirements. Another key factor that AI Foundry keeps in mind is the importance of an agile solution. A longstanding financial organization is unlikely to unplug all of their existing systems and therefore, all of AI Foundry’s solutions are flexible in nature, removing the need for banks to spend millions of dollars on a rip-and-replace architecture.

Looking ahead, AI Foundry plans to extend their services into commercial lending, and potentially segments including retail banking or wealth management. Their overall aim is to provide banks with a single platform that can be used to solve all challenges in mortgage, lending, and retail banking. To realize their plans, the company is contemplating acquisitions to gain access to technology that will integrate seamlessly with AI Foundry’s platform. “Overall, our vision is to build a large and pioneering business, and we are well on our way to achieve that,” ends Butler.