"One of our operating premises for the company is helping our loan officers create modern mortgage experiences for homebuyers and homeowners," said Majerus. "While we're being cautious, we are optimistic about what AI holds for improving the customer experience, our customer analytics, and the outcomes that it can provide."

The company's CEO says the San Diego-based lending shop has strived to be part of the wave of cutting-edge technology adoption.

Most recently, the company rolled out an internally facing AI chatbot, dubbed Synergy GPT. The main function of the chatbot is to help employees easily locate information, ranging from human resource guidelines, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac origination information and loan scenarios. 

"Our focus is to grab the low-hanging fruit where AI can provide value to a company like ours in areas like database management and retention of our customer database, and provide analytics around opportunities and managing that database for our loan officers," said Majerus. 

"We have found that people using it see an advantage in terms of the ease of getting access to information and then being able to make it actionable and reducing the number of human interactions needed on some queries that are easily handled by AI assistance," he added. "This frees up our teammates to do more complex things, more creative things."

Additionally, Synergy launched a tool called Clarity, which provides a point-of-sale as well as quality control in the origination process "to ensure that we're getting the most accurate picture of application data." 

"It helps provide certainty to the consumer in terms of what's needed on the loan, but also to our 

loan officers, processors, underwriters and post closing. They have all been able to make a use case out of this tool again, reducing friction, providing increased accuracy and speed in the manufacturing process."

The money question

Adopting new technology can come with a hefty price tag. For mid-sized lenders like Synergy, it is a fine balance deciding whether to have an in-house group of technology professionals to build proprietary solutions, or to rely on third-party vendors.

Majerus says that his business strategy for now is the latter.

The benefit of doing so is that you have first dibs to try out technologies that may just be coming to market at a discount, but there are also drawbacks to doing so.

"If we are an early adopter of a technology, we have the opportunity to have a voice in terms of customizations and specifics of what their products actually look like when they go to market," the executive said. "We've found that being an active participant has been a much better way for us to deploy some of these technology solutions versus retaining a large IT infrastructure internally, developers or other other people to kind of build those things out."

Majerus notes that relying exclusively on vendors can also have downsides that potentially negate any cost savings.

"You do have pretty significant costs with each of the partners that you're using, and we saw this during the downturn in the industry where you're stuck in long term contracts that in many cases have minimums tied to them, maybe those contracts become very uneconomic," he said. "When you add up our tech spend versus what it would be to support proprietary platforms and developers required to develop it, it's still better for us to go the vendor route."

Though the company's CEO wouldn't explicitly state the costs for the build out of something like Synergy GPT, he did say that some of these tech initiatives can hit the six figure mark.

"Very often for a company our size, these are six-figure investments in any of these technology partnerships, but not all of them," Majerus said. " When you can dip your toe in the water in some of these areas by being an early tech adopter you can deploy these solutions in a more economic way."

Future technology plans

Majerus sees a bright future for how AI can be implemented at Synergy.

Going into 2025 there are plans to "incorporate AI in the loan process itself in a more meaningful way," he said.

"We do think that pushing more analytics to the very front end of the process is an opportunity that is just staring us right in the face, and the deployment of some AI solutions at that stage of the process can advance things potentially in a meaningful way, which has downstream benefits as well."

To the age-old question of whether AI technology will impact the mortgage workforce, Majerus thinks it might to an extent.

"I do think there is a potential for that, but for the most part it will just be a reimagining of some roles," he said. "The human in the loop, as they say, is going to be a constant in this process, not only with sales people in creating solutions and options, but also in educating home buyers and assessing credit and requirements in a loan file. There's always going to be the need for a human role in a vast majority."