Angel Ai – the heaven-sent virtual assistant for your clients’ mortgage journey

IN Partnership with

Three years after its public launch, Angel Ai, from Celligence International, is promising an AI experience that is intuitive, emotionally responsive, and inclusive

WITH ANGEL Ai, your prayers are answered. At least when your prayers involve an augmented intelligence system that assists you and your clients at every step of the mortgage process. Angel Ai was developed by Puerto Rico-based Celligence International Inc. in collaboration with its parent company, Sun West Mortgage Company, Inc. in California. After over a decade of data collection and engineering, the coding of the AI engine started in 2004; shortly afterwards, in 2006, the world’s first automated underwriting engine for reverse mortgages was launched. The Ai interface was launched internally in mid-2018, before expanding to the marketplace in the fall of 2020.

Celligence International is an affiliate of Sun West Mortgage Company Inc., one of the largest independent, privately owned financial services companies. Celligence is one of the fastest-growing fintech and AI companies. The Puerto Rico-based company is listed as one of the “Best in Business” companies for 2023 by Inc. magazine.

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Winning partnership: Sun West and Celligence

Founded January 1980

“This is the definition of a tech going viral”

Pavan Agarwal, Sun West Mortgage Company, Inc.

“This is the definition of a tech going viral,” says Pavan Agarwal, CEO, Sun West Mortgage Company, Inc., who helped develop the technology alongside a tech team of about 300 based in Puerto Rico, the US mainland, and India. During that two-year period alone, about 40,000 to 50,000 loans were closed using the platform; today, that number is north of 180,000 applications. In the period from October to November 2022, six Angel Ai accounts were created. In the comparable period from October to November 2023, more than 5,000 accounts were created. In total, more than 138,000 messages have been sent on the platform and almost 23,000 unique conversations have occurred in the last few months alone. There is also always human oversight of Angel Ai and what it does. But even though a lot of work went into the product, it still needed a special something to attract the interest of loan officers – a warranty. “If it did not have a warranty, if I didn’t say, ‘I’m going to stand behind whatever it [Angel Ai] says,’ then they wouldn't trust it,” says Agarwal from his Puerto Rico office. “So we started off with the warranty from the beginning. The decisions are so reliable that we stand behind it. That’s the promise.”

Angel Ai started off life with the working name Morgan – a playful take on Mortgage Magician – but this was changed to Angel Ai in the summer of 2023. The platform was introduced with great fanfare in a Super Bowl ad that February, with music by acclaimed Puerto Rican composer Ángel “Cucco” Peña, who became the program’s namesake. “I wanted to make a big splash,” says Agarwal. “You have to make a statement. This is a serious product, a serious investment.”

The investment paid off, as it prompted several key endorsements that have spurred sales since, and it has been well received by loan originators, realtors, and borrowers.

The program is not just for running guidelines and scenarios; it can also provide answers regarding difficult underwriting situations or anything at all to do with a mortgage – the whole process even, including disclosures, complete underwriting, hedging, CD balancing, wiring, and even immediate MLO commission payments. “Where it would take hours to review a document, now it’s minutes to review a document, and the comprehensiveness of what it can do has expanded. The user interface has really matured,” Agarwal says. Getting ahead of the curve with AI was a “relief” for Agarwal, in that Sun West was already operating its chat AI system when ChatGPT was unveiled in the fall of 2022, sparking a renewed interest in AI and bringing it back to the forefront of the tech conversation. Even with Facebook betting on immersive metaverse avatars, Agarwal knew that the future was in chat technologies, even though there was a time when such thinking went against the grain. Now there is data to show that the best way to connect with and retain a customer is through SMS. And Angel Ai provides the simplicity that loan officers and borrowers need.

But Agarwal says “There is still a lot more to do.” In fact, his developers were recently handed a list of 30 improvements that he wanted to have available by early January 2024. Even when he spoke with MPA in early December, AI speed had increased in the previous 30 days, with 30 to 40 percent of questions being answered instantaneously, while maintaining the 100 percent trusted warranty. One of Angel Ai’s other main talking points is that it is empathetic to the user, employing word choice, for example, to gauge the mood of the person using the technology.

Angel Ai also steers clear of adding any biases, like filtering out lower credit scores or dismissing first-time homebuyers needing down payment assistance. Agarwal stresses that there is no vast racist conspiracy among lenders; it simply comes down to the economics of needing more staff to handle potentially less profitable and more complex applications. But with AI, the manpower required is minimized and the work takes less time. A good example comes from a traveling nurse who, on paper, was identified as having 20 job changes in a two-year period. She got an appointment every 30 days or so, meaning she had about 20 different W-2s. While she had a very important and

Arriving at the right time

A more equitable, fair computing experience

Published Jan 15, 2024

“Where it would take hours to review a document, now it’s minutes ... and the comprehensiveness of what [Angel Ai] can do has expanded”

Pavan Agarwal, Sun West Mortgage Company, Inc.

Sun West Mortgage Company, Inc.

Headquarters Cerritos, California

Phone 833-478-6937

Email inquiry@swmc.com

Celligence International LLC

Founded January 2013

Headquarters Guaynabo, Puerto Rico

Phone 1-855-711-1770

Email angelai@ celligence.com

Celligence’s other winning team

skateboarder Wyatt Hammond (USA)

Angel Ai has been endorsed by legendary real estate coach Bill Pipes. America’s #1 realtor, Josh Altman, was so impressed by Angel Ai that he agreed to be a paid spokesperson. Celligence also sponsors athletes who, like the business, can go the distance. They include:

surfer Aleli Medina (Puerto Rico)

surfer Sean Neil Rayngoudt (Puerto Rico)

surfer Faviola Alcala,

MMA champion King Mo

“We haven’t even begun analyzing tone of voice yet,” says Agarwal. “We’re just looking at the pattern of your writing … to figure out how you’re feeling.” This can help Angel Ai figure out whether you’re happy with the service, and how questions can be directed more appropriately.

The debate over AI has also included discussions on when subliminal racism may be baked into a program. But Angel Ai prides itself on polling well in terms of satisfaction among Americans of all races. The platform is also “trained on actual government regulations” surrounding anti-discrimination. “The rules for agency products and rules for FHA products, and so forth, are pretty straightforward and clear.”

steady job, she was declined by three lenders before heading over to Sun West for a mortgage. The loan officer took all of her documents, scanned and dropped them into the Angel Ai platform, and in three hours she had an approval. Her rejections were a result not necessarily of discrimination but rather of the work involved, which would have diminished the rate of return for the lender. “The more complicated the situation, the more likely they don’t want to do it. Nobody took the loan, because it was a lot of work,” Agarwal says. Angel Ai can “take the judgement out of the human.” And no human – not even a very good team – is likely to know all the regulations. Angel Ai, meanwhile, can provide an answer in hours that would have taken a human days to determine. For more information on the platform, click here.

baseball hall of famer Ivan “Pudge” Rodríguez

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