Lokesh Pathak, Mortgage Cadence’s Chief Information Officer has managed development teams across four continents and watched mortgage tech evolve from memorizing algorithms to using AI as a coding partner.
Today, two transformative forces, AI-assisted development and globally distributed teams, are reshaping the future of mortgage software. Those who embrace them will lead and those who don’t will quickly fall behind.
Having recently joined Mortgage Cadence after leading lending and banking systems globally, Lokesh sees these changes as paradigm shifts, not just incremental improvements.
“Twenty-five years ago, working with technologies like Vignette content management systems, C++ developers had to memorize programming languages. The teams would spend 3 to 4 months in training centers, covering maybe 25% of what we needed and then keep thick reference manuals at their desks to refer to,” Lokesh explains.
Today, that world has vanished. AI has fundamentally transformed the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).
Developers now use intelligent assistants to help them write code with significantly improved quality and efficiently.
Development speed has increased dramatically, and the barrier to building sophisticated applications has notably decreased.
AI Use Cases Transforming Mortgage
While AI revolutionizes how we build software, it's creating unprecedented opportunities for customer service:
- Document Intelligence: Mortgage processes entail extensive documentation, such as income verification, property appraisals, and credit histories. Presently, most processing relies on manual or rule-based methods. AI offers advanced capabilities to interpret, analyze, and extract relevant information from documents beyond what was previously possible.
- Risk Assessment Evolution: Traditional risk assessment relies on rigid rules and manual review. AI enables dynamic, intelligent evaluation considering subtle patterns human reviewers might miss, while maintaining regulatory explainability.
- Process Automation: Beyond document processing, AI can orchestrate workflows, predict bottlenecks, and automatically route applications based on complexity.
- AI Agents: AI agents facilitate dynamic decision-making and coordinate across multiple systems, enabling the effective pursuit of complex, multi-step objectives.
Fintech overall is seeing tremendous AI adoption. Mortgage companies not embracing these capabilities will face significant competitive disadvantages.
The Global Development Advantage: Building Around the Sun
I've managed what I call "follow-the-sun" development with teams working in perfect 24-hour cycles across time zones. A developer in India completes components during the day, a Central European team reviews and adds contributions at night, and North American teams validate and prepare next priorities. The Indian developer arrives to complete, tested code ready for iteration.
This isn't just about cost savings, it's development velocity that is impossible with single-location teams.
- Continuous Progress: Development never stops.
- Built-in Quality: Each handoff includes implicit code review.
- Diverse Perspectives: Different cultural backgrounds bring unique problem-solving approaches.
- Risk Mitigation: Global distribution provides natural disaster recovery.
The "follow-the-sun" model enables round-the-clock productivity, seamless handoffs, and uninterrupted customer support.
Combining AI and Global Teams: The Multiplier Effect
Real magic happens when combining AI-assisted development with globally distributed teams. AI tools work consistently across time zones and languages, providing common foundations for effective global collaboration.
For mortgage companies, this offers unprecedented advantages:
- Rapid Feature Development: What took months now takes weeks, with AI helping developers write better code faster and global teams ensuring continuous progress.
- 24/7 Customer Support Development: Mortgage applications don't follow business hours. Global teams can build systems providing real-time customer support regardless of timing.
- Regulatory Adaptation: When regulations change, globally distributed teams can implement compliance updates around the clock, ensuring faster time-to-market.
Mortgage companies face a choice: embrace these realities or fall behind competitors who do. Companies dominating the next decade will integrate AI throughout development and customer service processes while building globally distributed development capabilities.
These forces aren’t coming; they are already transforming the way mortgage companies operate. The companies who act now will gain a clear edge.
If you’re ready to explore what that transformation looks like for your organization, let’s start a conversation today.
By Lokesh Pathak, Chief Information Officer at Mortgage Cadence
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