Introducing Pylon
The mortgage factory problem
Mortgages are stuck in the past. Building and scaling a mortgage business today requires constructing a factory with 7-20 people manually manufacturing loans.
In the last decade, costs to originate have only increased despite the rise of new SaaS solutions, reaching an all-time high industry average of ~$11,600 in 2024 (1). Mortgages also flow through layers of intermediaries that take a spread on rates and inhibit the transfer of raw, well-priced capital to consumers.
Our team primarily comes from Stripe and Better, where we witnessed the power of enabling financial products through APIs—and the staggering inefficiencies of human-driven mortgage originations.
Introducing Pylon: The Programmatic Mortgage Infrastructure
For 2.5 years, we’ve been re-wiring the mortgage stack from the ground up, from capital markets to initial application (in that order). Pylon takes in multiple sources of information about a borrower and combines them into a coherent view of an applicant’s financial situation and ability to repay. We bundle all of that into enterprise-grade APIs that allow for complete control and flexibility.
Advancements in Operations Research, AI and ML have enabled us to tackle this complex problem at unprecedented speed and scale. With programmatic originations and capital through our APIs, Pylon is a foundational shift in the mortgage industry across all layers of the stack.
We’ve built 5 composable products on top of our APIs designed with automation and self-serve borrowing experiences in mind. These make building and scaling easier than before. These include Decisioning, Capital, Command Center, Elements, and Compliance.
We have partnered with the largest institutions to provide direct access to Wall St. This enables our customers to get to the bare metal with institutional-grade products, removing unnecessary friction and margin. Today, we announced our collaboration with Citi to connect their industry leading mortgage trading desk to the Pylon platform alongside a strategic minority ownership investment.
Delivering real results
Benchmarked to Freddie Mac’s 2024 Study, Pylon already reduces the average cost to originate by 74%. We’ve successfully processed tens of millions in live beta loan volume through platform R&D. We’re delivering scalability and efficiency to the $12 trillion mortgage asset class at the bedrock of the American economy.
We’ve raised $30m+ from investors including Conversion Capital, Citi, Peter Thiel, QED, Allegis Capital, and Fifth Wall. We have a lot to build, and many more problems to solve.
If you’re exploring how to build or scale mortgage products, get in touch with us at sales@pylonlending.com.
(1) https://sf.freddiemac.com/articles/insights/2024-cost-to-originate-study
