Ardley launches white-label automated underwriting engine

Reston, Virginia-based Ardley Technologies announced on Tuesday the launching of its white-label automated underwriting engine called Autopilot, which the company states will enable lenders to create instant, conditional loan approvals for qualified borrowers. 

“The main thing about Autopilot is the speed with which we can offer a decision to a borrower,” Nate Den Herder, founder and CEO of Ardley, said in an interview. “Most technologies are not architected to do a million loans every five minutes.” 

Den Herder, who spent about 15 years at Fannie Mae before founding Ardley in 2021, explained that the platform runs the borrower eligibility and pricing rule at every stage throughout the loan application and is able to offer a conditional approval at the end of the process. Requests for additional documentation can be made while the borrower fills the platform. 

“By leveraging a client’s pricing, fees and credit policies, along with any resell guidelines, Autopilot delivers confidence that every offer presented to a customer with conditional approval is real,” Den Herder said. “And by generating loan approvals instantly — not minutes, hours or days later — our clients can be assured they are first in line when a customer needs financing.”

Autopilot was added to the company’s deal-flow engine Actionable Data Intelligence, which in 2023 was used to structure 6 million loan offers and generate $1 billion in origination volume for its clients, the company reported. Ardley added that there’s no human assistance, and the engine can integrate with any loan origination system (LOS) or customer relationship management (CRM) solution. 

Den Herder founded Ardley after noticing a need for more technology for servicers in the market, since for the past eight years, startup investments have gone to point-of-sale systems that focus on origination. 

Although Autopilot is available to all lenders, it was built for companies that are also servicers and have borrower data ahead of time to maximize deal opportunities in any interest rate environment.

“We are happy to sell to anybody, but we see an opportunity with large servicers that maybe haven’t built out a lot of the technology that you need to do direct to consumer.”  

Ardley can help servicers with retention strategies and find new deals within their portfolio. A top 10 servicer is already using Autopilot, the company reported. 

According to Den Herder, in the current environment, “it costs more every day to originate loans, especially in the home equity arena, where loans are smaller.” 

“Every penny counts when it comes to costs of origination. We think that lenders win when it’s cheaper and easier to originate those loans,” said Den Herder, who is launching Autopilot at this week’s Mortgage Bankers Association Servicing Solutions Conference & Expo in Orlando.  

In a challenging market, when servicers and lenders are cutting vendor costs, Den Herder said Ardley has a subscription price for its platform that is “meant to be kept as low as possible,” and his company “gets paid on closed loans.”

“It’s true that many lenders are taking a very hard look at their expenses with their technology vendors; we aim to have positive ROI with all of our clients,” he said. “We accomplish that by participating when one loan closes, so we want to find more loans and help close them more quickly. Everyone wins, even in a tough environment.”