Mortgage lenders who equip “high-touch” loan advisors with technology like AI that helps them deliver useful advice to borrowers are earning the highest customer satisfaction scores, setting them up to win repeat business, according to an annual survey by J.D. Power.
J.D. Power’s 2025 U.S. Mortgage Origination Satisfaction Study, which surveyed more than 10,000 borrowers who bought a home or refinanced in the past 12 months, showed overall customer satisfaction with lenders was up 5 percent from a year ago, to 760 on a 1,000-point scale.
Lenders are doing a better job providing useful guidance or advice, and those who are able to connect with customers before they’re actively shopping for a home score 32 points higher, J.D. Power said.
Those are the hallmarks of AI tools that can predict when borrowers are in the market to buy or refinance their home, and then evaluate their finances to suggest loan options. The survey found borrowers who get useful guidance were 2.3 times more likely to say they “definitely will” choose the same lender for future loans.
Bruce Gehrke
“Mortgage lenders have come to recognize that the more educated their customers are about the details of their mortgage products, the more loyal and lucrative their relationships become,” said J.D. Power executive Bruce Gehrke in a statement. “The highest-ranked lenders in today’s market aren’t just those with the best rates; they’re the ones that have perfected hybrid engagement.”
Some of the nation’s biggest lenders, including United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) and Rocket Mortgage, have touted AI as crucial in helping them grow their business by delivering better service to borrowers with fewer employees.
Most borrowers surveyed by J.D. Power said they are “completely comfortable” (54 percent) or “partially comfortable (31 percent) with their lenders using AI in the mortgage origination process. But nearly three in four (71 percent) said it was “very important” for their lender to inform them when they are using such technology.
Nonbank lenders like UWM and Rocket have taken the lion’s share of the mortgage business away from traditional banks, with companies like Wells Fargo intentionally dialing back its market share.
But banks, which have made their own major investments in AI, dominated J.D. Power’s mortgage originations customer satisfaction ranking, taking six of the top 10 spots.
Mortgage origination satisfaction ranking
Source: J.D. Power 2025 U.S. Mortgage Origination Satisfaction Study
The top four companies in the J.D. Power rankings — Citi (802), Bank of America (792), Citizens (787) and Huntington National Bank (780) — are all traditional banks.
The top four were trailed in the rankings by Movement Mortgage (776), Guild Mortgage (775), Prosperity Home Mortgage (773) and Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp. (772).
Other banks scoring above the industry average of 760 were Chase (771) and TD Bank (766), with nonbank lending giant Rocket Mortgage scoring slightly better (762) than the industry average of 760.
As a wholesale lender that originates loans through independent mortgage brokers, UWM was not ranked.
Companies scoring below the industry average included loan servicing giant Mr. Cooper (697), Truist (709), PNC (721), loanDepot (722), New American Funding (726) and CrossCountry Mortgage (735).
Rocket Companies acquired Mr. Cooper last month in a deal valued at $14.2 billion, with Mr. Cooper Chair and CEO Jay Bray becoming president and CEO of Rocket Mortgage.
Both companies have invested heavily in AI, but Mr. Cooper has ranked below the industry average for mortgage servicers in a separate J.D. Power survey for more than a decade. Rocket Mortgage was the top-ranked loan servicer in J.D. Power’s 2025 U.S. Mortgage Servicer Satisfaction Study.
Rocket, which closed a $1.8 billion deal to acquire national real estate brokerage Redfin on July 1, has set a long-term goal of capturing 8 percent of the purchase loan market and 20 percent of the refinancing business, up from 3.9 percent and 11.3 percent in 2024.
Rocket CEO Varun Krishna sees AI as crucial to growing Rocket, Redfin and Mr. Cooper under the same roof.
“The reason that we are so obsessed with this technology is because it helps us with every single aspect of our business,” Krishna said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call. “It helps us grow the top of the funnel. It helps us lift conversion rates. It helps us reduce production costs, and it helps us increase capture.”
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