Better Home & Finance (NASDAQ:BETR) CEO Vishal Garg told attendees at the 28th Annual Needham Growth Conference that the company has shifted its business mix and improved unit economics by layering generative AI on top of a machine learning platform it has built over the past decade. Garg said those changes have positioned Better to return to growth in a mortgage market that has been pressured by higher interest rates.
From refinance boom to purchase and home equity
Garg said Better was founded about 10 years ago with the goal of modernizing home finance, including by building what he described as an AI-driven matching engine that connects consumer credit, income, asset, and property data with the preferences of 45 investors on its platform. He said the company scaled from roughly $500 million in annual volume in 2016 to more than $58 billion during the low-rate period that fueled online refinancing demand.
Unit economics improvements and AI-driven workflow
Garg said Better’s application of generative AI—paired with its existing machine learning capabilities—has helped drive recent operating improvements and enabled the company to pursue growth. He cited the following year-over-year changes:
- Loan volume up about 20%
- Revenue up about 50%
- Home equity business up more than 10x, which he said made Better “the fastest growing home equity platform in America today”
He also highlighted changes in per-loan economics. Garg said revenue per loan increased from about $7,400 to $8,500, which he attributed in part to faster consumer response times driven by “Betsy,” the company’s AI loan officer. He added that contribution margin improved from about $500 per loan to $1,700 per loan, a level he said Better has not seen since 2021.
According to Garg, the gains were powered largely by reductions in labor costs per funded loan (from $2,900 to $2,500), along with “smart application” of data costs, where the AI pulls data only when needed. He contrasted Better’s current labor cost per funded loan—about $2,500—with what he described as an industry cost of “$9,000 plus.”
Tinman AI and a shift toward platform revenue
A key theme of the presentation was Better’s push to scale through Tinman AI, its end-to-end mortgage platform designed to unify functions that Garg said typically require eight separate systems in the broader mortgage industry. He described Tinman as combining point-of-sale, pricing, loan origination, CRM, eligibility, documents and disclosures, compliance, and closing into a single workflow and dataset.
Garg said the platform is trained on more than $110 billion of loans originated, plus operational context including 12 million recorded phone calls, more than 5 billion pages of documentation, and investor rules across 45 investors. He said this has enabled Better to deploy AI tools beyond sales, including an AI loan processor and AI underwriter.
Operationally, he said 70% of Better’s loans are now “one-day mortgages,” and that 44% go from lock to commitment letter in under a minute. Garg said he expects more than 90% of loans could be done entirely via AI “over time in the next couple of years,” which he believes could reduce total cost per funded loan to under $1,000.
Garg said the company’s platform business now accounts for approximately 45% of total revenue, and he expects the mix to shift further—eventually to “80% or 90% platform and 10% direct-to-consumer.”
Enterprise partnerships and go-to-market progress
Garg said Better is monetizing Tinman by powering mortgage brokers and retail mortgage lenders—groups it traditionally competed with—by providing software and, when needed, back-office fulfillment, underwriting, closing, capital markets execution, compliance, and sales support. He also said Tinman is being deployed for financial institutions and banks as software that can be used with their internal teams.
He described several partnerships and implementations:
- A “top five U.S. personal financial services platform” with more than 50 million consumers, using a “mortgage broker in a box” offering to enter mortgage origination for its customer base.
- A “top five U.S. non-bank mortgage originator” doing more than $50 billion in annual volume, which Garg said is replacing an incumbent solution with Tinman and will launch next week with HELOCs and HELOANs, with plans to expand to its “$300 billion+ MSR book.”
- Finance of America, which Garg described as Blackstone-funded and the largest reverse mortgage originator in the country, partnering first on HELOCs and HELOANs and later expanding to mortgages, including a custom-branded version of Betsy.
- Growth at Neo, a mortgage platform Better brought onboard around a year ago, with Garg saying Neo funded more in Q3 and Q4 than in Q1 and Q2 combined and improved productivity metrics for loan officers.
- A small to mid-sized bank partner in the Tri-State area, which he said has shown “good growth.”
Macro outlook, competition, and profitability target
In Q&A, Garg said he sees a more supportive tone in Washington around affordability, describing policymakers as focused on lowering the cost of financing for homeowners. He said Better has faced “false starts” in late 2024 and mid-2025 regarding rate relief, but believes conditions are moving toward a tailwind.
On competition, Garg named Rocket Mortgage and loanDepot as key rivals in direct-to-consumer. He also said Better’s AI “debt advisor,” Betsy, can recommend broader debt paydowns and consolidation through cash-out refinances; he stated that consumers using Betsy to consolidate other debts have saved an average of $2,400 per month, compared with those who only pursue a rate-term refinance.
In platform software, Garg pointed to fragmented competition and cited ICE-owned Encompass and Black Knight, as well as Optimal Blue, along with other providers such as nCino and Blend. He argued that no competitor offers a unified click-to-close platform that combines underwriting and capital markets in a single flow, and emphasized Better’s per-funded-loan pricing model.
Looking ahead, Garg said Better has publicly stated it expects loan volume to double from the levels seen in Q3 and Q4 over the next six months. He also said the company expects to reach adjusted EBITDA profitability by the end of Q3 2026.
About Better Home & Finance (NASDAQ:BETR)
Better Home & Finance Holding Co engages in the provision of comprehensive homeownership services. It offers mortgage loans, real estate agent services, and title and homeowner’s insurance services. The company was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in New York, NY.
