I often hear mortgage executives say that AI won’t fundamentally change the business *that* much. This is a relationships business, consumer adoption is slow & housing has always defied tech shifts. But also: We simply want to provide our workers w/ AI technology that makes them more efficient. The goal is not to eliminate jobs through AI.

Personally, I don’t believe that the same execs who have already collectively laid off over 100K workers will be sentimental about replacing humans w/ AI agents as soon as they reasonably can.

Apparently, I am not alone. “I think we make this assumption a lot as a society...that there will always be some human touch on lots of jobs,” Vesta’s Mike Yu told Jeremy Potter & Sasha Stair on Monday’s “Now, Next, Later” webinar. “For example, for loan officers & for sales people, there will be human touch as long as the human is buying.” 

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He added that in about 15 years, people could go to ChatGPT V18 & instruct it to get a mortgage. “And in that world where they are not actually the buyer anymore—the [AI] agent does it all for them—I don't know if you even need the human touch in the sales process.”

For functions like back-office & closing, there’s “nothing metaphysical there” & thus, no reason the AI cannot figure out how to do it all, which is a little bit terrifying, Yu said.

“I do think that people underestimate how much automation there will be that actually fully removes entire job families,” he said. “And that is a very unpopular thing to say, b/c nobody wants to get automated.”

Yu concluded by saying that if the industry doesn’t prepare for mass job losses via AI, it will be much worse off. 

What he describes is the doomsday scenario for mortgage industry jobs. I have no doubt that the industry execs will attempt to move in that direction quickly, but I also think regulation/compliance frameworks will slow “progress” considerably. It will also take a long time for consumers to warm to the idea of having an AI agent buy them a home.

But if you happen to share Yu’s arguably dystopian vision, know that the timeline is fuzzy.

How quickly could lenders implement new & disruptive AI technology en masse?

“There are fundamental things you have to do in your technology if you want to be able to fully take advantage of AI,” said Yu. “I think that the vast majority of lenders just have not done that to position themselves where they can go & roll out a huge amount of it in ‘26.”

At Davos—which is actually a pretty meh ski resort town by Swiss standards—President Trump didn’t sound at all keen to allow consumers to use 401(k) accounts tax-free on home purchases. 

He said he is "not a huge fan" of using retirement savings in such a manner. Just a few weeks ago, the White House's head of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett said the administration was working on a proposal to allow penalty-free withdrawals from retirement accounts for home purchases. 

“Suppose that you put 10% down on a home and then you take 10% of the equity of the home & put it in as an asset in your 401(k),” Hassett said. “Then your 401(k) will grow over time as the value of your house grows. … More money for retirement and you’ll have solved the liquidity constraint problem and gotten yourself a house early in life.”

Trump also said the administration could make housing more affordable if it wanted to, but that would harm existing owners. “Now if I really wanted to crush the housing market, I could do that so fast, that people could buy houses,” he said. “But you would destroy a lot of people that already have houses. I am very protective of people who already own a house, of which we have millions & millions.”

Private mortgage insurance (PMI) activity remained steady in Q3 ‘25, reflecting both the pace of GSE issuance and trends in borrower credit quality. During the quarter, PMI covered $72.3 billion original unpaid principal balance (“Original UPB”) of newly insured GSE mortgage-backed securities compared to $65.3B in Q2 ‘25 & $72.2B in Q3 ‘24; accounting for 39.5% of total Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac issuance, increasing modestly from 38.7% in Q2 ‘25 and 38.9% in Q3’ 24.

The share of purchase money mortgages with PMI was 46.2% in Q3’ 25, compared to 46.3% quartering Q2’25 and 44.0% in Q3 ‘24. The share of refinance loans with PMI was 10.3%, compared to 11.0% quartering Q2 ’25 and 6.5% in Q3’24. Average FICO score of insured mortgages stood at 754, compared to 755 in Q2’ 25 and 753 in Q3’24. The share of mortgages under $200K w/ PMI was 24.1%, while loans w/ a balance between $200K-$300K was 36.8%, and loans w/ a balance greater than $300k was 42.6%.

This report is brought to you by Milliman. Milliman provides strategic and quantitative consulting services across the mortgage market with expertise in origination, servicing and capital investment.

Source: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac MBS Data Disclosure. Note: This data is separate & independent from Milliman’s quarterly Private Mortgage Insurer (PMI) industry report. Quarterly totals do not incorporate or relate to insurer-specific financial statements or published results.

At least 8 TCPA lawsuits have been filed against lenders in recent months, including 2 against UWM in December, NMN’s Andrew Martinez reports. 

UWM was accused last month by a consumer on the DNC registry of sending text messages from "Nick from UWM Partner."

In a motion to dismiss one complaint last week, UWM said one of its wholesale partners appeared responsible for the text, but did not identify them. "On its face, this attribution suggests that UWM itself was not the sender," an attorney for UWM wrote.

UWM claimed the plaintiff, Andrew James McGonigle, couldn't prove the lender benefited from the text & also questioned the identity of a 2nd UWM employee a co-plaintiff claimed to have spoken to on the phone 4 times.

These types of texts have been circulating for a very long time, typically on streamlines. In various messages reviewed by The Scoop, LOs will often describe themselves as working w/ UWM or even the VA or HUD directly. It would be very hard to prove UWM is responsible for its broker partners’ alleged violations of the DNR, but maybe the rise in TCPA lawsuits will end the behavior? TCPA fines can get pretty heavy.

The other companies named in the suits include Federal Savings Bank & a bunch of broker shops (E Mortgage Capital is among them).

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