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Better Home & Finance Holding Co. is betting big on artificial intelligence and strategic partnerships to drive growth, CEO Vishal Garg told investors on Tuesday during the company’s first-quarter 2025 earnings call.
At the core of this strategy is Better’s AI loan assistant, Betsy, which executed 127,000 consumer interactions in March. The company said AI-powered underwriting now supports 75% of its locked loans — up from just over 40% immediately after its launch — and is helping loan officers close more than three times the mortgage industry median per month.
Garg said during the earnings call that the company has three priorities moving forward. These include propelling growth and capitalizing on market opportunities; improving operational efficiency and reducing expenses; and continuing to diversify its product and platform distribution channels.
Productivity initiatives
So far, Garg’s goals are going according to plan. In an interview with HousingWire, Garg divulged that March was the company’s first profitable month since 2022.
The company was recently able to restructure $530 million in convertible debt with SoftBank’s SB Northstar, improving the company’s balance sheet by $200 million in pretax equity value.
Another notable factor in accomplishing all three goals is Better’s partnership with NEO Home Loans, announced in January. Since then, it has reportedly onboarded about 115 NEO loan officers across 53 branches.
“Currently, NEO loan officers are doing three loans a month, and we have the goal of more than tripling their capacity to 10 loans a month, thereby also increasing their earnings 3x and helping them serve even more families than they do currently,” Garg said.
“In January, we funded $2 million of loans for four families. In February, we funded $42 million for 104 families. And in March, we funded $119 million for 258 families.”
Kevin Ryan, Better’s chief financial officer, added that looking ahead, the company expects more than $450 million of NEO originations in Q2 2025 — representing quarterly growth of about 175%.
Garg anticipates “massive opportunity in the road ahead” to replicate the success of NEO with other traditional mortgage originators. He said that he’s already been approached by several LOs who have inquired about moving their businesses onto Better’s AI platform, Tinman.
Better is continuing to recruit seasoned LOs with their own books of business from “all of the big retail shops.” Garg said that these originators are not getting into bidding wars, nor is Better offering them signing bonuses or additional compensation.
“It’s just the promise of, you can build your business on top of Tinman, you will do three times as many loans, and your costs are going to come down by half,” Garg said. “I think the question is, do you want to get a bonus for staying flat and moving your business from one platform to another? Or do you want to triple your business?”
In addition to recruiting, Better is now licensing Tinman to banks. In the second quarter, it signed an agreement with a bank to power its entire mortgage operation. Garg said this marks the first time Tinman will replace legacy mortgage systems like pricing engines, point-of-sale systems or customer relationship management systems.
Financial health
Better funded $868 million in loan volume in Q1 2025. About two-thirds of this ($578 million) was purchase loan volume, 18% ($157 million) was for home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), and 25% ($133 million) was refinance volume.
The funded loan volume consisted of about 3,000 total loans, compared to roughly 2,000 in Q1 2024 and 3,300 in Q4 2024 — indicative of fewer loans but higher loan sizes.
Year over year, funded loan volume was driven by increases in all three main product categories: home equity products, including HELOCs and closed-end second liens (+207%); refinances (+64%); and purchase loans (+9%).
Direct-to-consumer volume totaled $614 million from January through March, up 71% year over year but down 19% quarter over quarter. Revenue rose to $33 million, up from $25 million in Q4 2024, while net losses held at $51 million — flat from one year ago and narrower than Q4 2024’s $59 million loss.
Historically, Better has been keen on capturing refinances. Garg said that the refi market this year is “choppier” than he anticipated. As a result, the company is leaning into the HELOC space while it waits for rates to break and inflation to ease.
