Artificial intelligence firm aims to outdo OCR, speed loan processing

AI Foundry is aiming to further cut the time it takes to originate a mortgage by adding, among other things, artificial intelligence technology designed to improve on optical character recognition. The fintech firm on Tuesday launched a new "cognitive business automation platform" aimed at improving automated decision-making related to loans, and a new version of its Agile Mortgages technology, which loan officers use to automate the collection and organization of documents. The new technology classifies data and information that at a 90%-plus accuracy rate is "significantly more accurate than optical character recognition," according to a company press release. "Competition in the mortgage lending industry is intense, and while many companies have deployed point-of-sale solutions for the customer, the back-end processes have not undergone a digital transformation, until now," Steve Butler, founder and general manager of AI Foundry, said in a press release. How does your digital mortgage stack up? "We will truly disrupt the'status quo' by automating the mortgage application process and enabling lenders to complement those front-end capabilities with one-day mortgage approvals. This not only opens enormous potential for acquiring and delighting new customers; it also drives down the cost per mortgage, so lenders can be more profitable."