HousingWire: Tidalwave partners with Flat Branch Home Loans on AI mortgage sales platform. Flat Branch said its new point-of-sale system has converted 90% of applications to submissions by streamlining the borrower experience February 19, 2026, 9:00am by Neil Pierson Flat Branch Home Loans has launched an AI-d... Flat Branch said its new point-of-sale system has converted 90% of applications to submissions by streamlining the borrower experience February 19, 2026, 9:00am by Neil Pierson. Flat Branch Home Loans has launched an AI-driven point-of-sale system with Tidalwave, achieving a 90% application conversion rate and enhancing the mortgage process for borrowers and loan officers. Mortgage technology firm Tidalwave and Midwest-based lender Flat Branch Home Loans on Thursday announced that Flat Branch has launched a modernized point-of-sale system and mobile app in conjunction with Tidalwave's agentic AI platform. The point-of-sale system, known as Flat Branch Home, has been operational for a few weeks. Already, it has converted 90% of consumer applications to submissions, which is a "metric that stands out in an industry where borrowers routinely abandon apps when they hit paperwork requests, manual follow-ups and underwriting confusion," the companies explained in a press release. Flat Branch is the first independent mortgage bank (IMB) to implement Tidalwave's agentic platform on an end-to-end basis. But it's not the first industry player to use Tidalwave's software as it follows on the heels of partnerships with DHI Mortgage, First Colony Mortgage, Mortgage Solutions and NEXA Lending. Tidalwave said it's on pace to impact more than than 200,000 loans by the end of 2026, growth that's driven by a $22 million Series A funding round announced in November with investor participation from Permanent Capital and D.R. Horton. Flat Branch leaders said the company's new point-of-sale system is "built intentionally for today's borrowers and the loan officers who support them," and it's designed to create a faster and "more intuitive" mortgage application process. "Thanks to our incredible partnership with Tidalwave, we've been able to launch Flat Branch Home," Jamie Pandolfo, president of Flat Branch Home Loans, said in a statement. "The future of technology is here, and we're embracing it for a better experience for our borrowers and our loan officers. Tidalwave has given us the opportunity to take our origination to the next level." "Flat Branch's leadership team is showing the industry what it looks like to lean into change instead of waiting for it," said Diane Yu, CEO and co-founder of Tidalwave. "Their willingness to rethink the borrower and loan officer experience is rare and incredibly impressive. We're honored to be their partner on this journey and thrilled to see Flat Branch Home already converting 90% of application starts to submissions, a powerful proof point for what's possible when great operators and modern AI work together." Flat Branch Home works with borrowers from start to finish to upload and sign documents, track tasks, review disclosures, receive notifications and communicate with their LO officer in real time. Its mobile app is available to download through app stores. It pairs with Tidalwave's SOLO platform, which provides multiple ways to deepen connections between borrowers and LOs while streamlining the application process. This includes AI chat support for both parties, along with automated document processing, lead qualification, underwriting support and integrations with other key mortgage tech platforms. "Technology should make loan officers' lives easier, not harder," said Michael Eckley, Flat Branch's chief technology officer. "There's a lot of noise today with social media and AI, but, at Flat Branch, we are implementing technology with intention. It's a transformation of how we support and empower our loan officers."

Tidalwave, an agentic AI-powered mortgage point-of-sale (POS) platform, today announced a $22 million Series A funding round led by Permanent Capital, with p...

Tidalwave raises $22M to reshape mortgage processing with agentic AI. There's something odd about the mortgage industry: decades of talk about "digitization," yet anyone who has ever endured the process knows the truth - it's still a slow-moving paper labyrinth where every step depends on someone emailing someone else to confirm something that should've been automatic years ago. So when Tidalwave announced a fresh $22 million Series A round, led by Permanent Capital and joined by homebuilding giant D.R. Horton, it didn't feel like just another funding announcement. It felt like a signal that a sector built on delay, fragmentation, and legacy workflows might finally be ready to change in a material, structural way. Tidalwave's pitch is refreshingly simple: use agentic AI - not just scripts, not simple automation, but autonomous workflow agents - to remove the endless manual steps that currently define mortgage origination. Right now, the average mortgage in the U.S. takes about 43 days to close, requiring hundreds of human-driven data entry tasks across disconnected systems. That's the inefficiency Tidalwave is aiming to erase. Instead of borrowers chasing PDFs, bank statements, and verification letters, the platform taps into real-time verification integrations with Plaid, Argyle, Truv, and direct automated underwriting via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The result: a mortgage journey that feels more like using a modern fintech app and less like filing a tax return in 1997. The traction appears real. Over the past six months, industry names like NEXA Lending, Mortgage Solutions, and First Colony Mortgage have already integrated the platform to cut approval cycles and reduce cost-per-loan - something Freddie Mac research suggests can trim origination expenses by roughly $1,500 per file. That kind of savings, multiplied across high-volume lenders, becomes transformative rather than incremental. And Tidalwave is aiming to scale aggressively: the company expects to power more than 200,000 loans annually, which translates to an estimated 4% share of U.S. mortgage originations by 2026. There's also symbolism in who joined the cap table. When the nation's largest homebuilder, D.R. Horton, not only writes a check but also becomes a customer through its subsidiary DHI Mortgage, it's a validation that this isn't just a startup pitch - it's a shift in how the system could operate. Jason Duboe of Permanent Capital, now joining Tidalwave's board, framed it bluntly: the company stood out as the first in this space applying "real AI" to a very real industry bottleneck. CEO and co-founder Diane Yu sounds almost energized by the scope of the challenge rather than intimidated by it. She described the mortgage landscape as one built on fragmented tools and human intervention, and now sees the funding as fuel to accelerate more intelligent agents capable of taking over underwriting-adjacent tasks with minimal oversight. It's not automation for the sake of efficiency - it's automation at scale without degrading trust or compliance. If anything, it's the opposite: more consistency, fewer errors, and fewer places where human teams must clean up avoidable mistakes. It's still early, and mortgages are deeply regulated, slow-moving, and culturally risk-averse. But the industry has reached a point where inefficiency is no longer just inconvenient - it has become a competitive liability. If Tidalwave can collapse processing time, improve margins, and still satisfy compliance requirements, the competitive pressure to adopt solutions like theirs could escalate quickly. For now, this funding round feels like more than another line in the ongoing AI gold rush. It feels like the beginning of a structural rewrite of one of the last large consumer financial processes still stuck halfway between digital promise and manual reality. And maybe, just maybe, the next time someone buys a home, they won't have to drown in paper to do it.