Artificial intelligence startup Flair Labs says a recent deployment with West Capital Lending demonstrates how AI voice agents can help mortgage lenders capitalize on leads that might otherwise go untouched.
Flair, a two-year-old Y Combinator–backed company, builds digital voice assistants that work on behalf of lenders, servicers and brokers. The technology sits on top of a lender’s existing systems, including CRMs such as Bonzo, Total Expert and Salesforce, to qualify borrowers, answer basic questions and route live, qualified leads to loan officers.
The company said its AI platform contacted more than 44,000 mortgage leads during a one-month deployment in May involving 70 West Capital Lending loan officers. According to Flair, the system placed more than 318,000 outbound calls, connected with roughly 11,400 borrowers through live conversations and generated 1,788 warm handoffs to loan officers, including 1,053 live transfers and 735 scheduled callbacks.
The results highlight a common challenge for mortgage lenders, which often spend significant sums acquiring leads but struggle with borrower follow-up.
“West Capital purchases a large volume of leads from providers… in addition to generating its own direct-to-consumer leads,” Flair founder and CEO Samir Sen said in an interview with HousingWire. “Their biggest pain point was capturing more opportunities without having to continue building out their loan officer team.”
Sen said it has worked with West Capital for about eight months, though the figures released this week reflect only activity during May.
“The challenge in mortgage has never been about a lack of opportunity; it’s always been about the ability to follow up with leads quickly and consistently,” said Tony Do, broker of record and vice president of real estate at West Capital Lending. “The breakthrough that Flair provides is [that] they identify the borrowers who are ready to engage and connect them directly with our loan officers, allowing our team to spend more time having productive conversations and less time manually working through a list of leads. It has transformed how our teams approach lead follow-up.”
AI-automated outreach
According to Sen, the AI system automates repeated outreach after a borrower expresses interest in a mortgage product, whether through an online advertisement, lead provider or an existing customer database.
“What we’re able to automate is a touch plan of about six attempts per lead,” Sen said. “Every borrower is attended to. Today, most loan officers stop after one or two attempts, and the purpose of the AI is to have a more persistent approach so every borrower gets an opportunity to discuss what they are looking for.”
Not every borrower reached ultimately speaks with a loan officer. Sen said approximately 25% of contacted leads result in a live conversation, while roughly 15% to 20% of those conversations become either live transfers or scheduled appointments that the AI agent creates for the loan officer.
Long-term follow-up campaigns
Borrowers who are not immediately ready to move forward are placed into longer-term follow-up campaigns.
“The other borrowers may not have been immediately qualified, but they’re put on a nurturing cycle where, over time, some percentage of those end up becoming loans,” Sen said.
Of the 1,788 warm handoffs generated during the May deployment, about 200 ultimately resulted in funded loans, Sen confirmed.
Flair’s AI voice agents conduct initial conversations with borrowers, ask qualifying questions and determine whether to transfer the caller directly to a loan officer or schedule a callback if the loan officer is unavailable.
Sen said the platform integrates directly with West Capital’s Bonzo CRM system, allowing outreach to begin automatically when a new lead enters the CRM or meets other predefined triggers. To manage volume, the company also gives loan officers control over when the AI places calls or attempts live transfers.
Flair also analyzes call transcripts to surface the highest-priority leads each day, allowing loan officers to focus on borrowers who appear most likely to move forward.
Digital assistance transparency and compliance
As AI-powered customer interactions become more common in financial services, Sen said Flair emphasizes transparency and compliance. The company’s voice agents identify themselves as digital assistants at the beginning of every call, and Flair manages telephony compliance, including consent requirements, calling-hour restrictions and opt-out requests.
“We announce in the opening line that this is a digital assistant,” Sen said. “Even with that, anecdotally, we’ve found that many borrowers don’t realize they’re speaking with AI because the conversations are so natural. But we’re transparent about it.”
The company says its technology is designed to supplement rather than replace loan officers.
“A mortgage is still a human decision,” Sen said. “People want to talk to someone who can explain the tradeoffs and help them feel confident. We’re not trying to automate that relationship away. We’re trying to make sure the borrower who is ready for that conversation actually gets to the loan officer before the moment passes.”
The announcement comes after Flair Labs raised $4 million in funding led by Leo Capital with participation from Y Combinator. The company said it plans to use the capital to expand its AI voice platform for mortgage lenders, brokerages and loan officers.
