Elio CEO Oren Michaely recently contributed to HousingWire with the first article in a series examining how artificial intelligence could reshape the way mortgage companies operate.
In the article, Oren argues that despite growing investment in AI, mortgage origination remains fundamentally constrained by an operating model built around human coordination. The average cost to originate a loan reached $11,898 in the first quarter of 2026, while lenders earned just $727 in pre-tax production profit. The challenge, he argues, is that much of the industry’s technology has focused on making individual tasks faster without addressing the fragmentation underneath them.
A single mortgage still requires information and context to move across numerous people, systems and institutions. Loan officers and operations teams often serve as the connective tissue, navigating different lender requirements, portals, conditions and workflows. As mortgage companies grow, that complexity has traditionally required adding more people and more layers of coordination.
AI creates an opportunity to change that equation. Rather than simply automating individual tasks within existing workflows, AI can help translate lender-specific requirements into common workflows, maintain context across systems and route exceptions to the people whose expertise and judgment are needed.
The larger opportunity ahead is to rethink the operating model itself. Mortgage companies that can use AI to reduce handoffs and human coordination could ultimately support greater volume, choice and personalization without requiring headcount and operational complexity to grow at the same rate.
Read Oren’s full article in HousingWire.
Back to News and Insights