Tech All-Star: Kaushal Shah Is Rethinking the Appraisal Process
(Kaushal Shah photo courtesy of Class Valuation)
The appraisal industry is going through some much-needed change. There is a big opportunity to speed up closing and ensure a worry-free buying experience for borrowers. So Kaushal Shah, Chief Technology Officer with Class Valuation, is reimagining the end-to-end appraisal experience powered by data & AI.
Shah, an MBA NewsLink 2025 Tech All-Star Award recipient, said he believes that solving problems and simplifying process are the two biggest opportunities for a technology leader to contribute to the success of key stakeholders, including customers, employees and investors.
Class Valuation is one of the largest valuation companies in the U.S. Shah joined the firm in 2021. He led the creation and deployment of SmartSuite, a set of AI-powered technologies that optimize how appraisals are assigned, processed and reviewed. These tools apply data science, predictive models and generative AI to reduce human error, eliminate manual steps and deliver faster, more consistent valuation outcomes.
“Think of Uber,” Shah noted. “We all love the way Uber works because it connects you with the right driver based on your preferences. It is fast, it is reliable, and it provides consistently high-quality service. These are the three things that our industry also wants. You need to have a faster appraisal process. You want to provide quality service, and you want to make sure that you are trusted consistently.”
Class Valuation is now one of the most advanced users of AI in mortgage services. And Shah’s work influences how appraisal performance is benchmarked across the industry. He noted Class Valuation’s lender partners now see shorter turn times, fewer conditions and more reliable appraisals from the outset.
Shah said his team focuses on two things. First, focus on business outcomes that technology can impact. Second, one must “breathe data.”
“The amount of data in the property and mortgage space provides the perfect space to take full advantage of today’s mature cloud and AI tech,” Shah said. “It is therefore extremely important for an engineering team to deliver to known business needs, but it’s even more important to make business aware of the potential with new technology and how it could help simplify experience and boost business results. Picking the right set of use cases and experimenting with a high level of predictability has helped our team deliver these outcomes. Ultimately, it’s important to build a formidable team that is curious, hungry, skilled and can be trusted to do this most efficiently.”
Skills Honed Outside of the Mortgage Space
Before joining Class Valuation, Shah was the head of engineering for API, customer connectivity, identity and access management with SWIFT–the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication–a financial cooperative that provides the messaging network international payments travel through. He developed software solutions for banks, corporates and settlement houses and built teams in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Shah also held executive roles at Verizon, including leading verizonwireless.com and digital engagement and commerce, where he managed digital operations for a channel with more than $5 billion in revenue.
“My team provided technology solutions to almost 2,000 stores at Verizon. We were the first in the country to bring in mobile point of sale systems,” Shah said. He led the team that developed the architecture behind Verizon’s online infrastructure for Apple iPhone launch days. While competing ecommerce websites and in-person portals routinely crashed under pressure, Verizon never went down and handled hundreds of thousands of transactions within minutes.
“That was an extremely proud moment for everybody at Verizon,” Shah recalled. “And that required solid architectural understanding and execution.”
Bringing It All Together
That success parallels his work in the valuation space: the ability to anticipate operational choke points, solve for scale with data and deliver under pressure. This systems-level thinking, honed outside the mortgage industry, makes his contributions in the mortgage world important.
Shah’s contributions have resulted in measurable gains across the mortgage valuation process. Appraisal quality issues have dropped by more than 30 percent thanks to automated image classification, algorithmic matching and AI-assisted content validation. These improvements reduce costly revision cycles and help files move through underwriting faster.
For lenders, that means fewer appraisal conditions, faster closings, reduced fallout and higher borrower satisfaction. Class Valuation has also realized meaningful efficiency gains and cost reductions, enabling faster scaling and sustained investment in product innovation.
The SmartAssign engine Shah and his team developed routes appraisal orders using real-time data, reducing time-to-field and accelerating early-stage fulfillment–one of the most critical points in the mortgage process.
Class Valuation now uses generative AI and computer vision in active production environments, not just in limited pilots or labs. These technologies–which many in the industry are still testing–are producing operational value for Class Valuation’s lender clients. The outcome is more efficient appraisals, better-performing loans, greater confidence for underwriters and a digital experience that borrowers notice.
Importantly, this advancement in efficiency has enabled Class Valuation to scale its coverage footprint, including in rural and traditionally hard-to-serve areas, broadening access while maintaining speed and quality.
Shah shows that even one of mortgage’s most entrenched processes can be rebuilt for speed, quality and accountability in a sector that has long lagged in modernization. As the GSEs, regulators and investors all sharpen their focus on valuation integrity, Shah’s work is helping set the stage for what comes next, making him a Tech All-Star.
