Over 40% of new HELOC borrowers used AI to drive decision, JD Power analyst says
Bruce Gehrke (pictured top), senior director of wealth and lending intelligence at JD Power, said the home equity numbers in particular stood out.
“In just home equity — HELOC — the number is over 40% of current borrowers who opened a new HELOC within the last three months have used artificial intelligence to drive that decision,” Gehrke told Mortgage Professional America. “That’s like a zero-to-60 kind of thing. Go back maybe a year and a half, and that didn’t exist.
“So you’re a HELOC lender, this is something you have to be thinking about. And I think it’s the same thing that you’re going to see this on the mortgage side as well, no question.”
What is fueling adoption
The speed of the shift is what Gehrke said makes it notable. The fact that more than 4 in 10 are using AI for HELOC decision-making suggests the adoption of new technologies is happening faster than in the past.
The trust element is the variable that will determine how fast AI moves through purchase and refinance mortgages, Gehrke said. When consumers trust an AI model for a high-stakes financial decision, behavior changes, and the HELOC data suggests that threshold has already been crossed for a meaningful share of home equity borrowers.
