Innovating Where It Matters Most: How Cenlar Is Transforming the Homeowner and Customer Service Experience (Sponsored by Cenlar)
By Andrew Pohlmann, Senior Vice President, Client Management, Cenlar
About Cenlar
Cenlar is the industry’s premier mortgage subservicer trusted to manage millions of loans across all 50 states and U.S. territories. Serving a diverse portfolio of banks, credit unions, and mortgage bankers, we deliver a homeowner experience rooted in care, innovation, and excellence. As an extension of our clients’ businesses, we simplify the complexities of mortgage servicing through expert teams, pioneering AI-driven solutions, and flexible, high-quality processes.
In mortgage servicing, innovation matters most when it shows up in the moments that define the homeowner experience.
At Cenlar, using the right tools, thoughtfully and responsibly, to make servicing easier to understand, easier to navigate and easier to trust. Across homeowner‑facing experiences and customer service operations, Cenlar is applying artificial intelligence in practical ways that deliver measurable value for both clients and homeowners.
Meeting Homeowners Where They Are, With the Right Information
Cenlar’s entry point into homeowner‑facing genAI began with informational bots designed to answer common, time‑sensitive questions quickly and consistently. Voice bot capabilities like these expand how homeowners access help in ways that feel natural and efficient. In 2025, Cenlar launched bots focused on scenarios such as government shutdowns, natural disasters and deconversion events. These are moments when homeowners need clarity fast.
These tools provide a non‑authenticated FAQ experience, answering general questions by drawing only from curated, approved content. Guardrails ensure responses stay within defined knowledge boundaries, reinforcing accuracy and trust. For homeowners, that means faster access to reliable information, without needing to wait for a live advisor.
More than 60% of the homeowners affected by the government shutdown in the 4th quarter of 2025 who received assistance from our bot did not need further help from an advisor. The bot spent 72 seconds per conversation, quickly resolving homeowner questions. For those calling in a time of need, they are moments that matter.
Advancing Support
Building on that foundation, we launched our first authenticated AI bot in February, focused on escrow, a confounding topic for many homeowners and a top call driver.
Since then, we continue to see the number of homeowners using the voice bot grow every month. More than 1/3 of homeowners who called us in June with an escrow question got the help they needed without any advisor assistance.
This represents a meaningful shift in how homeowners receive personalized support. When a homeowner calls the IVR and has a recent escrow analysis on file, the system recognizes that context and offers the AI bot as part of the escrow flow. The interaction transfers securely and authenticated, allowing the bot to deliver loan‑specific answers based on curated FAQs and loan‑level data.
We have continued to enhance the experience based on homeowner feedback and interaction data. Rather than walking homeowners through lengthy calculations, the bot now provides clearer, more conversational responses. For example, if an insurance premium increase caused a payment change, the bot simply explains the reason and the amount of the increase, helping homeowners get to the answer faster.
If homeowners need or want additional help, they can transition seamlessly to a live advisor, still authenticated. Advisors have full visibility into the homeowner’s prior interaction and can pick up the conversation without starting over. The result is a smoother handoff, less repetition and more respectful experience for the homeowner.
This escrow bot is part of a broader organizational focus on areas where homeowners need the most help. We also have a web-based escrow chatbot, which delivers answers for nearly 90% of homeowners who interact with it, as well as proactive education and outreach efforts that help homeowners find answers before they ever need to pick up the phone.
Importantly, the escrow bot also has helped us refine a repeatable framework for expanding authenticated bots across additional use cases.
Empowering Advisors with Smarter Tools
Innovation at Cenlar extends into the advisor experience, where speed, confidence and accuracy directly impact service quality.
Our Advisor Search capability augments traditional knowledge search by using AI to interpret the advisor’s question, identify the most relevant document and deliver a concise, accurate answer, while linking back to source material. Future phases will expand this into a conversational experience that synthesizes answers across multiple document sets and helps advisors refine unclear prompts, much like a guided ChatGPT‑style interaction.
These tools reduce the time our advisors spend searching for answers across thousands of policies, regulations and procedures and increase time they spend focused on helping homeowners without sacrificing precision.
Turning Conversations into Insight with 360 Feedback
Every interaction tells a story. Our 360 Feedback capability ensures those stories are heard and understood.
By layering AI‑powered analysis on top of call and chat transcripts stored in a central repository, advisors and leaders can quickly identify why homeowners are calling, where friction exists and what trends are emerging across touchpoints. This insight enables more proactive issue resolution and supports a more scientific approach to identifying level‑one complaints, reducing reliance on subjective judgment alone.
The same analytics help determine whether an issue is isolated or systemic, enabling root‑cause analysis that directly informs process improvement.
Real‑Time Support Through Advisor Assist and Coach
The building blocks already in place (call transcription, summarization and search) are enabling the next evolution: Advisor Assist and Advisor Coach.
Advisor Assist uses real‑time AI during live calls to provide contextual guidance for advisors. If a homeowner asks about options related to an escrow shortage, for example, the AI proactively surfaces relevant procedures and next steps, without requiring the advisor to search mid‑call.
Advisor Coach focuses on quality and consistency, monitoring sentiment, pacing, interruptions and hold times. Advisors receive prompts when interactions drift outside service standards, and supervisors can be alerted in real time. The goal is better support, consistency and outcomes for homeowners.
Proof, Not Promises
Together, these innovations demonstrate how Cenlar is delivering more than ideas. We’re delivering results.
For mortgage servicers, the lesson is clear: AI creates an advantage when it is designed around real servicing moments, governed with intent and integrated with human expertise.
This is what leadership in mortgage servicing looks like: innovation grounded in real outcomes, built to serve homeowners and empower clients, today and into the future.
