Authored by Sourav Roy, Vice President – Enterprise Solutions at Speridian Technologies
The U.S. mortgage industry continues to wrestle with a costly contradiction: despite millions poured into automation, origination costs remain stubbornly high. According to insights shared at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) 2025 Annual Convention, lenders are facing the paradox of “efficiency investments without efficiency outcomes.”
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Why Origination Costs Keep Rising Despite Tech Investments
Lenders entered the digital decade with high expectations, faster loan processing, fewer defects, and happier borrowers. Yet, origination costs per loan have continued to rise. The culprit isn’t technology itself but how it’s implemented and measured.
- ROI tracking lacks objectivity– many institutions struggle to quantify real gains.
- Change management is neglected– teams are trained on tools but not transformed by them.
- Scope creep is rampant– average delivery delays exceed six months.
- Bridging the business-technology gap remains a challenge, as project managers turned product owners often lack the experience to translate strategic goals into product features and processes.
The result is the same: manual workarounds persist, diminishing the very efficiencies automation promised.
Seeing the Future Before It Arrives
As one executive aptly asked during the MBA 2025 sessions: “If you could see the future, what would you want to know now?” That question captures the mindset shift lenders need.
Loan volumes haven’t bounced back to pre-2020 levels, but this is the time to invest, not retreat. Building adaptive technology now ensures readiness when market volumes return. The key is to retain borrowers from credit check through pre-qualification, using automation to anticipate needs and maintain engagement at every step.
Be Prepared- Even If You’re Wrong
According to the Fannie Mae Mortgage Lender Sentiment Survey (Q4 2024), over two-thirds of lenders plan to increase technology investments in 2025, even amid margin pressures. Their reasoning is simple: it’s better to be prepared and wrong than unprepared and hopeful.
That philosophy is shaping a new generation of “Smart Adaptive Mortgage” models, digital ecosystems that balance automation and analytics with human judgment. Instead of replacing staff, technology now augments them, making decisions faster and more consistent across changing market conditions.
The Human Equation: Trust and Transformation
Technology adoption succeeds only when employees trust it. Today, 60–70% of origination costs remain tied to full-time employees, making it critical to invest in workforce confidence. Lenders must communicate “what’s in it for me” to drive adoption, spending time educating staff about how automation reduces repetition, improves accuracy, and enhances their role, not threatens it.
Transformation is not just about installing systems; it’s about building trust, confidence, and clarity across every user group.
The Way Forward
Automation isn’t failing, it’s being mismanaged. Many institutions treat tech projects as “install and forget” initiatives instead of iterative programs.
The fix lies in merging business process expertise with technical execution, empowering teams to make incremental improvements rather than overhauling systems in isolation.
Automation in mortgage lending isn’t a lost cause, it’s an unfinished journey. The next phase isn’t about more tools, but smarter alignment: between automation and adaptability, analytics and action, and people and process.
The lenders who digitize with discipline, those who measure impact, train effectively, and build trust, will set the standard for tomorrow’s lending landscape.