Direct-to-Consumer Lending: It’s Time to Up Your Game—Here’s How

Meet the Partner: CredEvolv

CredEvolv connects low-credit/high-debt consumers, mortgage lenders, and HUD-certified nonprofit credit counselors in a unified ecosystem. 1 in 3 Americans lack the credit score to qualify for a mortgage. CredEvolv works to change that by providing a structured path to help credit-challenged borrowers improve their scores—and debt load—and become loan-ready in as little as three months. For mortgage lenders specifically, CredEvolv closes a common gap in the lending process and turns declined applicants into future qualified borrowers rather than lost opportunities.

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For mortgage lenders, credit challenges represent one of the most persistent and overlooked barriers to growth.

Every year, roughly 1.4 million mortgage applications are declined because of credit or debt-related issues, representing more than $300 billion in unrealized lending opportunities. But many of these borrowers are closer to qualifying for a loan than lenders realize. With the right guidance, many can improve their credit profile, reduce debt pressure, and return to the market application ready.  

That reality creates a major challenge for lenders.

Too often, once a borrower falls outside current underwriting requirements, the relationship hits a dead end. The loan officer may know the borrower could qualify in the future, but there is rarely a structured, scalable way to stay engaged, provide the right education, and track progress without creating workflow friction. As a result, these borrowers slip out of sight and often into the hands of competitors or third-party credit repair services.

This is exactly the kind of untapped opportunity that Total Expert and CredEvolv help lenders act on.

Turning yesterday’s denial into tomorrow’s approval

CredEvolv is a fintech platform that connects credit- or debt-challenged consumers with HUD-certified nonprofit credit counselors to help them improve their credit scores and become loan-ready, while keeping them engaged with lenders. The value here isn't just the counseling itself. It’s the ability to keep those borrowers connected to the lender’s relationship and communication strategy instead of pushing them out of the pipeline entirely.  

Historically, lenders have had limited options for supporting borrowers who are close to qualifying but need time and guidance. Many solutions in the market operate outside the lender’s main workflow, creating friction for teams and confusion for consumers. That can break continuity with the loan officer, limit visibility into borrower progress, and make follow-up inconsistent. CredEvolv was built to solve that problem by helping transform a declined or delayed loan into a managed pipeline opportunity.  

Because CredEvolv integrates directly into Total Expert, those opportunities become easier to operationalize at scale.

Bringing credit improvement into the main workflow

The real power of the CredEvolv and Total Expert partnership is that it helps lenders move credit-improvement communications and nurturing into the same system where they already manage customer engagement.

Instead of treating credit-challenged borrowers as exceptions that sit outside normal sales and marketing motions, lenders can identify those borrowers, connect them to trusted nonprofit counseling, and continue relevant communication inside their existing workflow. That means fewer handoff gaps, better visibility, and a more consistent borrower experience.  

For lenders, this is important at three critical moments:

• Before an application begins, when early conversations suggest credit or debt may become an obstacle.

• After a soft credit pull, when signs of qualification challenges become more visible.

• After a HMDA-recorded decline, when many borrowers may still be closer to qualifying than they appear.  

In each of these moments, the opportunity is the same: keep the borrower engaged, educated, and moving forward with a clear plan.

That aligns directly with Total Expert’s broader approach to customer engagement—using intelligence and workflow orchestration to help lenders show up in the moments that matter and prevent opportunities from slipping through the cracks. Total Expert Customer Intelligence includes Credit Improvement Alerts that identify when a borrower who initially didn’t qualify now meets your organization’s required credit criteria. From January-June 2025, credit improvement was one of the most monitored signals helping lenders uncover new application and funded-loan opportunities through Total Expert.

Why early engagement matters

When lenders identify warning signs early, the conversation with the borrower changes.

Instead of ending with “you’re not approved,” it can become: “here’s what needs to happen to get you there.”  

Some of the most common indicators include high credit utilization, recent late payments, thin or unstable credit history, rising debt-to-income pressure, and scores near underwriting cutoffs. These are not always signs that a borrower is out of reach. More often, they are signals that the borrower needs education, accountability, and a structured path forward.  

That is where CredEvolv plays a critical role. Through its network of nonprofit counseling partners, borrowers receive realistic guidance tailored to their situation.  

• Consumers who work with CredEvolv’s nonprofit counseling agencies reach their goals in an average of three to five months, often improving their credit scores by 40 to 100+ points while reducing utilization and resolving delinquent accounts that were preventing approval.  

• Lenders that use CredEvolv’s recommended best practices also report seeing pull-through rates up to 50% on borrowers who enroll with a credit counselor.  

A better experience for borrowers and a better process for lenders

For borrowers, the experience is more supportive and less transactional. They’re not left to figure things out alone. They're shown a path forward, supported with education from a trusted source, and given a reason to stay connected to the lender that first engaged them.

For lenders, the advantage is operational. Rather than relying on manual follow-up, disconnected vendors, or inconsistent loan officer outreach, they can keep Credit Improvement Journeys closer to the core relationship strategy. That helps teams maintain visibility, reduce lost opportunities, and make sure borrowers working toward qualification don’t get left behind.  

This is especially valuable in an environment where lenders are under pressure to do more with the opportunities already in their database. Recovering even a fraction of borrowers who would otherwise be lost can create meaningful pipeline lift without relying solely on new lead acquisition.

From dead end to pipeline strategy

Credit-challenged borrowers should never be written off. For many lenders, they represent one of the most overlooked business growth opportunities.

Together, CredEvolv and Total Expert help lenders turn what used to be a dead end into a more structured recovery strategy: identify credit-challenged borrowers earlier, connect them with trusted counseling resources, keep communication active inside the lender’s main workflow, and re-engage them when they’re ready to move forward.  

That’s the difference between simply declining a borrower and building a process to win them back. And in a market where every opportunity matters, that difference can be significant. A small change in your organization’s mindset and workflow could be the life-changing support that a borrower needs, and that they won’t forget.

*This article was originally posted on HousingWire.com*

Artificial intelligence is rapidly moving beyond experimentation and into real business impact across the mortgage industry. In this executive conversation, Total Expert CEO and Founder Joe Welu sat down with Allison LaForgia to explore how lenders can turn AI from a buzzword into a competitive advantage.

Welu explains why understanding borrower intent is becoming one of the most powerful competitive advantages in lending. From millions of AI-powered conversations to the growing importance of trust and compliance, the discussion explores how lenders can use AI to create smarter, more personalized customer journeys.

“There’s really two types of companies,” Welu said. Some are “moving from experimentation and pilots into full scale. Let’s transform the business. Let’s build the future.”

Others, he said, are still “treading lightly and cautiously” as they try to determine “what’s the right formula for their organization to really adopt it.”

What is clear to Welu is that the stakes are rising fast. “There’s an extreme bifurcation happening in really every business right now,” he said. “There’s not going to be this middle anymore. There’s going to be very clear winners, the people that are getting ahead of it.”

In his view, lenders that make AI a strategic priority are already “getting a lot of ROI and impact,” while others are “certainly falling behind.”

Welu said Total Expert’s approach is different because it starts with intelligence and context, not just automation. “AI agents are very, very powerful,” he said, because “it actually can do the task, it can call the customer, it can send the note, complete something that a human would have had to complete.”

But that power only works if the underlying context is right. “You’re only going to get the outcomes that you want if you have the right insight, intelligence and, more importantly, context that is feeding those AI agents,” he said. “Combining these systems of intelligence directly with a system of action is really how you transform the outcomes you want in your business.”

That is where Customer IQ comes in. Welu described it as “this intelligence layer that has all this context,” helping lenders understand “what’s important now” for each borrower.

Intent, he said, is rarely one signal alone. Rather, it is “a series of things that are put together” like equity, demographics and life events like getting married, having children, or downsizing.

The goal is to understand “what is this customer really caring about at this moment” and then meet them there “with the voice, the empathy, the education.”

On the engagement side, Welu said Total Expert’s AI Sales Assistant is already providing scale and insight into how borrowers want to interact. “We’re on pace this year to do over 130 million voice AI agents,” he said.

Those conversations, he added, show that AI can often improve the front end of the experience. “They actually, as it turns out, maybe not shocking, listen better than our average sales people,” he said. “They have perfect memory, so they always remember the last conversation.”

When rate opportunities open, it creates “infinite ability” to reach borrowers quickly, while still handing off qualified consumers to human advisors at the right time.

For Welu, the future is not AI replacing people, but AI and humans working together throughout the borrower lifecycle. “The consumers really have just overwhelmingly voiced positive” feedback, he said, while loan officers gain more time to focus on advice instead of repetitive outreach. “

AI plus humans are going to really redefine what a perfect customer journey is,” Welu said. “I think it’s just going to raise the bar.”

We sat down with Ross Diedrich, CEO of Covered, to explore a growing challenge and opportunity facing mortgage lenders today: homeowners’ insurance. As insurance volatility, climate risk, and rising premiums increasingly impact loan timelines and borrower affordability, lenders can no longer treat insurance as a back-office compliance task. In our conversation, Ross shared how embedded insurance experiences can transform a historically fragmented process into a strategic advantage for lenders improving borrower experience while unlocking new revenue and retention opportunities.

For most borrowers, getting a homeowners’ insurance policy has been treated as the final step in the mortgage process. A necessary requirement to confirm before closing rather than a critical component that’s integrated into the broader borrower experience. But that approach is becoming increasingly outdated.

Rising premiums, climate-related risks, and shifting carrier appetites are making insurance a much more complex part of the homebuying journey. In some markets, borrowers are facing fewer coverage options and significantly higher costs, which can disrupt closing timelines or affect loan affordability. What was once a simple compliance task is now a critical factor in the lending process.

As a result, lenders are beginning to rethink how insurance fits into each borrower's journey toward homeownership. By embedding insurance earlier in the process, lenders can reduce friction, improve borrower experiences, and unlock new opportunities for long-term engagement.

Total Expert customers can now integrate insurance solutions from Covered directly into their borrower journeys to transform a historically fragmented process into a seamless, digital experience.

Bringing insurance into the borrower journey

Traditionally, borrowers begin shopping for homeowners’ insurance late in the mortgage process, often while juggling multiple closing requirements. This timing can lead to delays, document chases, and added stress for both borrowers and loan teams.

Planning and accounting for insurance needs from the outset changes that dynamic.

With Total Expert, originators can use key borrower milestones such as loan purpose, property type, or stage in the application process to create personalized communications that include a simple “click-to-quote” experience, allowing the borrower to compare policy options from dozens of carriers in seconds.

Because the experience is integrated into the lender’s existing workflows, originators remain central to the relationship while borrowers gain a faster, easier way to secure coverage.

Once a borrower selects a policy, their contact record in Total Expert is automatically updated with key details like the carrier name, premium, and policy effective date. This eliminates manual follow-up and ensures lenders have clear visibility into the status of a critical closing requirement.  

The result is a smoother experience for borrowers and fewer administrative headaches for lenders.

Expanding coverage options in a changing market

Insurance availability is an increasing concern in many parts of the country. Some lenders have responded by building captive insurance agencies or internal brokerage capabilities to capture more of the opportunity.

While those strategies can be effective, they can also face limitations when borrowers encounter complex risk scenarios or when carrier availability varies by region. Covered helps address those gaps by providing lenders and borrowers with access to a broader insurance marketplace.

As a licensed digital insurance agency operating in all 50 states, Covered connects borrowers to more than 65 national and regional carriers. This expanded network improves the likelihood that borrowers can find bindable coverage, even in challenging or high-risk markets.

For lenders, this additional access helps reduce the risk of last-minute surprises that could jeopardize closing timelines.

Moving beyond referral links

Some lenders attempt to address insurance needs through basic referral links. While these links provide borrowers with a place to start, they often introduce new challenges.

A referral link typically sends borrowers outside the lender’s ecosystem, leaving originator teams with little visibility into the process. Documentation must still be collected and recorded manually, and lenders remain responsible for ensuring policies meet closing requirements.

A licensed, integrated insurance partner offers a much more seamless approach.

Covered manages the documentation-heavy aspects of the process, delivering evidence of insurance, declaration pages, and invoices directly back to the lender. Licensed U.S.-based agents also provide expert support to help borrowers navigate complex underwriting conditions and ensure policies are successfully bound before closing.

This combination of technology and specialized expertise helps lenders maintain visibility while simplifying the borrower experience.

A long-term opportunity beyond closing

Perhaps the biggest opportunity lies beyond the initial mortgage transaction.

Unlike many financial products, homeowners’ insurance renews annually. That renewal cycle creates an ongoing opportunity for lenders to stay connected with borrowers and provide meaningful value over time.

By monitoring renewal activity, lenders can proactively identify borrowers experiencing premium spikes and help them shop for better coverage options before costs escalate. This can help prevent “escrow shock,” reduce the likelihood of lender-placed insurance events, and strengthen borrower trust.

Insurance insights can also support refinance recapture strategies. Rising premiums increase borrowers’ monthly payments and can push debt-to-income ratios higher. Helping borrowers find insurance savings may restore refinance eligibility and preserve opportunities that might otherwise be lost.

Even simple campaigns such as automated loan anniversary reminders to review insurance policies can help lenders remain relevant long after closing.

Turning insurance into a strategic advantage

Borrowers who shop through Covered often uncover meaningful savings opportunities— averaging roughly $1,240 annually—by comparing policies across multiple carriers.

But the true value lies in the experience lenders can deliver.

By embedding insurance directly into the borrower journey through Total Expert, lenders can streamline closing workflows, reduce operational friction, and create new opportunities to engage borrowers throughout the life of the loan.

What was once treated as a routine closing requirement is quickly becoming a strategic advantage for lenders focused on delivering modern, customer-first homeownership experiences.

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