Lending startup Figure today announced the rollout of an AI tool to make the home lending process more efficient. The company plans to launch an AI tool powered by GPT-4 that will help find errors in loan documents.
Founded in 2018, Figure specializes in helping consumers secure mortgage lines of credit. The company touts that its all-online process reduces the typical 45-day process to five days. More than half of Figure's business is B2B, embedded in companies such as solar panel loan company GoodLeap.
The company, which has raised more than $1.5 billion and was last valued at about $3 billion, is currently moving forward with its AI efforts, according to Pitchbook. This strategy was declared by new CEO Michael Tannenbaum, who left his position as Brex's chief operating officer (COO) to join Brex. Hard. “I thought this was something that could really change the way fintech companies work,” he said of his move.
The main AI product he is promoting is to help “look and compare” instances in the lending process. He gave the example of an asset level explanation. This is a unique description of the asset that must be exactly the same in many legal documents. Traditionally, humans would have to scan over 60 pages to make sure the descriptions were the same. Tannenbaum said the new features will significantly reduce the manual effort and time required to verify documents. He said this is an example of AI “reducing costs from complex processes.”
Because loan applications include personal information, the company is relying on OpenAI to ensure that its privacy agreements are strict and that “the models are not trained a certain way based on our customer data.” He said he had to communicate with them many times.
Although this functionality runs on GPT-4, Chief Data Officer Ruben Padron emphasized that the company has prioritized building a model-agnostic system. “We are constantly testing and evaluating different models as they are released, almost weekly and sometimes daily,” he said. The company's systems “offer a lot of flexibility to quickly and dynamically migrate to the vendor that provides the best performance.”
Padron believes there will be more AI services in Figure's future, stressing that the more you automate the loan application process, the less chance of error or bias. “We are serious about reducing costs, eliminating manual labor, and reducing bias,” Padron said. “It's really a journey. It's not a destination.”