Candor raises $12.5M to build autonomous mortgage underwriting science

Candor Technology announced on Wednesday that it closed $12.5 million in a Series A fundraise, led by early-growth capital firm Arthur Ventures.

The new round brought total investments for the lending technology company — which uses machine intelligence to power its mortgage underwriting platform — to $13.9 million with its previous debt financing closed at $1.4 million in October 2020, according to Crunchbase.

Candor aims to bring better consistency to underwriting. The latest injection of money will go toward further developing the company’s Loan Engineering System. The system is a patent-pending decision engine with 37,741 pivot points. It’s also part of a larger innovation Candor’s trying to establish called Mortgage Decision Science Technology.

“This allows lenders to fundamentally improve the economics of making a mortgage, beyond what current business models can accomplish,” Founder and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Showalter said in a statement emailed to National Mortgage News. “Candor’s Loan Engineering System...autonomously makes income, asset, and lending decisions that are backed by a defect policy.”

The company has integrated three loan operating systems with its platform. Two more are in progress. In addition to conventional mortgages, clients will be able to render decisions on those backed by the Federal Housing Administration and Department of Veterans Affairs through the Loan Engineering System later in 2021.

“Candor has solved an extremely difficult problem in the mortgage industry. They have taught a machine to think like an underwriter.” Patrick Meenan, general partner at Arthur Ventures, said in a press release.