This article originally appeared in the August 2025 edition of MortgagePoint magazine, online now.
As the homebuying season gains momentum, lenders face a quiet but costly threat: loan application abandonment. When every relationship is hard-won and every closing counts, watching prospective borrowers vanish mid-application is a bitter missed opportunity. Increasingly, lenders are trying to use artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools to intervene at just the right moment—offering real-time support and reducing friction before it drives customers away.
But the abandonment numbers are sobering. Despite improved digital platforms and record-level interest in online mortgage tools, around 68% of online loan applications are abandoned—usually due to poor customer interactions—and about 48% of consumers who experience digital friction take their business elsewhere. Borrowers start the journey with clear intent—but somewhere between application start and submission, they run into friction, confusion, and a lack of immediate support … and then they’re gone.
For every abandoned application, there’s a lost revenue opportunity and a disappointed potential borrower. But while the problem is easy to see, it’s harder to solve. Why? Because it lies at the nebulous intersection of digital experience, customer support, and organizational readiness.
Lenders are in dire need of more intelligent, context-aware, and personalized ways to support borrowers within the mortgage application process. Creating a program with that kind of support requires reimagining what support looks like in a digital-first environment.
Reasons for Abandonment
Mortgage technology has come a long way. Online applications are faster, sleeker, and more secure than ever. The real issue is not an unpolished interface—it’s that borrowers abandon applications when the process becomes too complex for them to handle without guidance.
The loan process—despite being digital—still carries the complexity of its analog predecessor. It is filled with financial jargon, unfamiliar document requirements, and high-stakes decisions. When borrowers get stuck, they need help right then and there. And too often, they are met with unresponsive chatbots, slow email replies, or a prompt to call a service line and have to start from scratch.
It’s a fractured experience, split into disconnected parts: chat windows, email threads, follow-up calls. It’s support that looks digital but feels unnatural. And borrowers who expect real-time answers and seamless transitions lose patience.
What Customers Truly Want
In trying to make processes fully digital, lenders have inadvertently introduced new roadblocks. The future of lending support must elegantly combine the strengths of humans and emerging technology to create a model of support that’s smarter, faster, and more intuitive than either could offer alone.
Emerging technologies—especially in AI—now enable what the mortgage industry has long needed: digital support that combines the efficiency of technology with the empathy of the human touch.
Discovering a New Model
Scalable and secure digital tools that support the customer journey can bridge the gap between customer intent and loan conversion. These solutions make support more effective, more contextual, and more human. Think of the evolution this way …
The old model is characterized by call center queues; a series of “we’ll get back to you” replies; and half-answered questions.
The modern model features proactive, on-page support during the application process; context-driven AI assistants with high understanding rates; and intelligent escalations to human agents already equipped with context.
By meeting borrowers where they are—and providing support teams with tools that work across channels—lenders can dramatically reduce abandonment and convert more applications into loans.
Preventing Borrower Drop-Off
Abandonment does not happen all at once. It begins with hesitation … a confusing field, a question left unanswered, a document that will not upload. Even at that point, most borrowers do not cancel, they may pause the process. They say they will return, but rarely do.
How Can Lenders Stop This Hemorrhaging of Borrowers?
- Be proactive, not passive: Waiting for a borrower to ask for help is too late. Smart digital engagement starts by anticipating when and where borrowers are likely to need help.
Behavioral cues—like a stalled application, repeated field edits, or a long hover over a specific question—can trigger a timely intervention. A better experience might involve an AI virtual assistant popping up on screen with guidance or offering to connect the borrower with a human agent right as these behavior cues start to happen. The key is to step in before confusion becomes frustration—and frustration leads to abandonment.
- Preserve context across channels: Borrowers don’t think in terms of “channels.” They just want help. Whether they’re using a laptop at home, switching to mobile at lunch, or clicking a support link in a follow-up email, they expect the interaction to carry over.
That is why context continuity is essential. Modern customer interaction platforms preserve conversation history and borrower data across digital touchpoints, so the interaction remains fluid, and frustration never enters the equation.
- Use hands-on agent support to unblock the journey: Not every obstacle in the loan process is due to unanswered questions. Sometimes, poor interface elements—like unclear upload buttons or complex dropdowns—are the problem.
Digital tools can use advanced screen sharing that allow agents to view and navigate the application with the borrower in real time while protecting their private details. Agents can highlight fields, walk through tricky sections, and resolve confusion without the borrower ever leaving the loan application.
- Accelerate document sharing securely: Document collection is one of the most common sources of abandonment. Applicants may be unsure what to upload (or where to find it), hesitant about privacy, or simply confused by the format.
Secure in-application upload tools, paired with instant confirmation and live assistance, reduce friction and instill confidence. The faster borrowers complete this step, the less likely they are to disengage.
- Offer 24/7 virtual help for simple questions
Not every borrower needs an agent to help them. Many abandon simply because they cannot get quick answers to routine questions: “What’s a DTI ratio?” “Do I need to upload pay stubs?” “How long does this take?”
AI-powered virtual assistants trained on loan-specific content can field these questions in real time—24/7. When escalation is necessary, they seamlessly transfer the interaction to a live rep, preserving the context.
With this kind of real-time, proactive support, borrowers can feel like they are getting the help they need—and lenders can create interactions that mirror the personal attention of an in-branch visit, building trust and loyalty during these critical financial moments.
Empowered Agents Close More Loans
Improving borrower support is only half the equation. Agents also need smarter tools to work more effectively—and ultimately capture more loan revenue.
- Let AI uncover agent coaching opportunities: With advanced interaction analytics, AI can monitor common abandonment points, flag ineffective agent responses, and surface opportunities for improvement. Contact center managers gain visibility into what is working, where support breaks down, and how individual agents can improve. It’s targeted training—without the guesswork.
- Provide real-time guidance: Agents are often expected to know everything: product specs, compliance rules, troubleshooting techniques. That is unrealistic, especially in high-volume environments like homebuying season.
Modern AI-powered support platforms surface real-time suggestions and reference materials during borrower interactions—providing agents with the right information, right when they need it. Think of it as a smart assistant for the agent, not just the customer.
- Let agents focus on interactions where they add the most value: By automating routine support with AI-powered virtual assistants, human agents are free to focus on what they do best: solving complex issues, building trust, and guiding borrowers during critical financial moments. This shift improves performance and reduces burnout, helping agents feel more effective at their job.
The Lending Experience Borrowers Truly Want
Loan abandonment is often viewed as a borrower problem. But it is just as much a problem for lenders, and it is often rooted in aging support infrastructure that needs to be replaced.
Borrowers want to complete their applications—they start with clear goals, and they are motivated. What they need is support that meets them in the moment, during the application, and on their terms.
The good news is that leading lenders are already leveraging robust AI-powered digital tools to transform their borrower support. With these field-proven solutions readily available, the 2025 homebuying season presents an ideal opportunity for financial institutions to modernize and elevate their interactions.
This is the season to reimagine borrower support—not as a separate function, but as an integrated, intelligent part of the lending experience.
