BAYAMON, Puerto Rico, Nov. 05, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Mortgage applications processed through AngelAi at Sun West Mortgage Company had substantially lower decline rates in 2025 than national benchmarks, according to new research examining how AI can reduce barriers to mortgage approval. Applying the observed decline-rate gaps nationally, the research found approximately 1.1 million additional creditworthy mortgage applications could have been approved, representing nearly $230 billion in additional loan volume.
The findings were published in a white paper, “Operationalizing Fair and Accessible Lending with AI.” The study compared 2025 AngelAi outcomes with national Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data. Decline rates were 24 to 29 percentage points lower across every ethnicity analyzed:
- Asian applicants: 4.01% with AngelAi vs. 32.98% nationally
- Black applicants: 18.55% vs. 44.32%
- Hispanic applicants: 13.73% vs. 39.10%
- White applicants: 9.24% vs. 33.31%
The research also found that AngelAi achieved its lower decline rates without materially worsening delinquency, default, foreclosure or loss severity. These results point to a challenge to homeownership beyond creditworthiness. Borrowers with multiple jobs, irregular income or extensive documentation take more time and effort to process, making them more costly for lenders to serve. As a result, these borrowers can be less likely to be approved even when they are not a greater credit risk.
“Complexity is not the same thing as credit risk, but our industry has made complex borrowers more expensive to serve,” said Pavan Agarwal, CEO of Sun West Mortgage Company and founder and CEO of AngelAi. “AI changes those economics. At Sun West, we’ve brought the cost of manufacturing a mortgage down from roughly $5,000 to under $125. When complexity no longer comes with a significant cost penalty, lenders can give more borrowers a fair opportunity to own a home.”
AngelAi automates much of the manual work involved in processing a mortgage, from document intake and validation to income analysis and condition management. Unlike an LLM, which generates answers based on probability, AngelAi’s patented Transactional Language Model (TLM) follows defined rules to complete transactions, producing consistent and auditable results.
The research follows a recent $100 million investment in Celligence, the financial technology company that developed AngelAi, from real estate finance firm Mortgage Treasury. The investment will help scale AngelAi to millions of users.
Matsunaga Construction, a Japan-based construction company and one of the lead investors behind the $100 million investment, is now publicly identifying its participation, citing both AngelAi’s business fundamentals and its mission to expand access to homeownership.
“As a construction company in Japan’s Greater Tokyo Area, we build homes and infrastructure that support everyday life,” said Daisuke Matsunaga, President and Representative Director of Matsunaga Construction. “Facing demographic change and labor shortages firsthand, we believe AI will transform how businesses serve their community.
“As long term investors, we also recognize the importance of diversifying beyond yen-dominated assets. But we wanted more than an AI story – we wanted an established business with real customers, financial strength, and tangible value. That is what drew us to AngelAi. Pavan’s experience working directly with borrowers resonates with our own: a home is the foundation of a family’s future. We build homes. AngelAi’s vision is to help people access the financing to buy them and the support to keep them. We see global potential in that mission.”
AngelAi has already registered more than 415,000 users and facilitated more than $40 billion in transactions. Celligence plans to build on that by expanding AngelAi internationally and applying its TLM technology across a broader range of financial services. The full white paper is available here.
About AngelAi
AngelAi automates complex financial decisioning and transactions with accuracy, transparency and trust. The platform is owned by fintech and AI developer Celligence LLC and draws on Sun West Mortgage Company’s more than four decades of proprietary data and expertise. AngelAi is built on Celligence’s transactional language model (TLM), which simplifies the mortgage process from banker to borrower and delivers accurate responses with a warranty customers can bank on. To learn more about AngelAi visit here and for investor relations, financial disclosures, and corporate updates, visit here.
Mortgage and other financial services are provided by Sun West Mortgage Company, Inc. NMLS 3277. Celligence LLC is an affiliate of Sun West Mortgage Company, Inc.
Media Contact:
Madelyn Jones
madelyn@carvecomms.com
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