Tidalwave’s Diane Yu about AI’s impact on mortgage jobs
Yu was accompanied on stage during the event by Jeremy Potter, the founder of Next belt strategies which also served earlier to companies such as Firm And Rocket Mortgage. They provided insights into how AI can replace or change rolls in the mortgage industry in the next 18 to 24 months.
“We all run a day of risk,” Potter warned. “We have to approach it when we think about what we deliver to our companies.”
Yu’s comments were at the right time given the news that Tidalwave has entered into a partnership with NEXA MOOFOThe largest brokers in the country, who gives the 3,200 brokers of NEXA access to the agentic AI platform of Tidalwave. Brokers will have a wide range of time -saving help within reach, from lead qualification and document processing to insurance technical support and multilingual customer communication.
Point-of-Sale (POS) technology is the “access point” for lenders and borrowers that use Tidalwave’s technology, Yu said. With these tasks it’s all about making a clean file as quickly as possible, so that processors, originators and insurers are not dealing with pain points just before closing.
AI can remove much of this manual labor, Yu said, but she urged others not to concentrate on a single solution such as POS when they choose and invest in a technology supplier.
“You have to change the conversation. You have to encourage your seller to think differently about this,” she said. “When your suppliers think differently, they bring you a solution, not just a point solution, and they must be able to replace a tool that is currently in your technical pile that you use.”
Potter and Yu delve into the potential demand for traditional loan production tools that enclose AI and improve which lenders already buy from suppliers. In many cases, Potter said, this could be a more tasty solution for “native, organic or new AI that is supplied outside the traditional and threatens the traditional platform.”
Yu said she already sees this trend in the industry.
“The AI agent disrupts the workflow,” she said. “It changes how you work, how you change the task, the task of moving your production process. You have to think about this very differently, so that you can also think of existing seller with an AI option to help you work better every day, faster. And then there will be extra new entrepreneurs, such as AI -Native companies that come up with those types of recommendations.”
Potter said it is safe to assume that although “AI is not going to remove every role, it is certain that AI will change every role.” That includes everyone, from the C-suite, all the way to trainees. And that makes the task of company -wide acceptance of specific tools a difficult one. Many companies will just have to choose a place to start.
Yu believes that she has a “different opinion” than other market leaders when it comes to AI Adoption indics.
“From the supplier’s perspective … If you come across an adoption problem, I would claim that this is not the right product,” she said. “If you come across an adoption problem, I would say that you are going back to the drawing board. You probably don’t have the right product to help the customer of the lender.”
Internal mortgage managers must invite feedback from their employees about which tools are useful and which are not. The right tools, Yu said, will be taken over by a broad base of the workforce. That has been the case for Tidalwave, who is on a pace to sign 30 customers in 2025.
“That is the level of the adoption that you should see as soon as you have the right product-to-market fit,” she added. “We spent two years to make that. It doesn’t happen overnight, I guarantee you.”
