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FAQ

Understand what Sonar can do for your business

We've curated answers to some of our most frequently asked questions

Sonar is a lending AI company. We automate mortgage origination end to end with AI, and we offer it two ways: as software your team uses (Sonar Apex), or as a service where we run the operation for you (SonarOps).

Apex is the tools. SonarOps is the outcome.

With Sonar Apex, your loan officers, processors, underwriters and closers work with our AI agents and workflow tools, either on top of the systems you already have or as your whole system. With SonarOps, our US-based team does the processing, underwriting, closing and post-closing work for you on the same technology. You provide the guidelines and underwriting criteria, sign off, and fund.

Independent mortgage banks, banks, credit unions and larger-scale brokers. Lenders that want to make their own team faster usually start with Apex. Institutions that would rather not run a mortgage back office at all usually start with SonarOps. You can begin with either one and add the other.

Two things. First, our AI agents and tools cover the entire origination process, from the borrower’s application through post-closing, and they help both your borrowers directly and the team working the loan. Most mortgage AI covers a single step.

Second, you choose how to use it. Connect by API and keep Sonar invisible behind your own systems. Have your team work in our workflow tools. Or let us take over the entire operation. It is the same technology in all three cases, and our own operations team uses everything we build, every day.

An AI agent is software that is given a job on a loan, such as clearing a condition, and carries out the steps to get it done: reading the documents, checking them against the guidelines, requesting what is missing, updating the file and recording what it did. Sonar is an agentic workflow platform, which means agents do the work and do not just offer suggestions.

Our agents assist every role in origination: loan officers, processors, underwriters, closers and compliance. They work within your rules and guidelines, everything they do is logged, and people make the final decisions.

We have been building the platform for more than eight years, and we are now launching the full AI suite on top of it. It has been tested on real loans across every type of mortgage. Before founding the company, our leadership team had already originated billions of dollars in loans. More about us.

Yes. Apex is a natural first step: your team works with the technology and sees what it does. SonarOps runs on the same platform, so handing some or all of the work to us later does not mean starting over.

Three things happen on every loan. Apex reads the file and underwrites it: every document is read and checked against the program guidelines, and you get a complete underwrite with conditions. It builds the list of everything needed to close, in order and assigned. Then it does the work: it chases documents, clears conditions and assembles packages, and sends your team what needs a person’s judgment.

No. Apex works on top of any LOS that has an API. Your LOS stays your system of record and nothing gets ripped out.

Yes. Apex includes every piece needed to originate a loan, from point of sale through closing, and can run as a complete system. You can also use only the parts you need alongside what you already have.

A borrower-facing application and portal under your brand. Borrowers can apply, compare and lock rates, upload documents, see exactly what is still needed, track their loan and schedule their closing in one place.

What makes it different is that our AI reads each document the moment it is uploaded, so the borrower finds out right away if something is missing or wrong, not days later. We believe it offers the best borrower experience in mortgage, and it is one of the first things we show in a demo.

Two ways. They can simply tell it what they need in plain language: “Please change the loan amount to $425k,” “Resend the updated pre-approval letter,” or “What is missing for clear to close?”

And it works on its own through triggers you set. For example, when documents are uploaded, Apex can start a full analysis of the loan straight away. By the time a loan officer or processor opens the file, they already know what matters and what has to happen next.

No. The AI does the work on the file. A person reviews it and makes the final decision on every underwrite and every credit decision, no matter what.

Yes. Apex underwrites to your rules and guidelines, including your overlays and each investor’s requirements. Setting that up is part of every deployment.

It is caught in review, the same way a person’s mistake would be. Every file is reviewed by a person before a decision is made, and everything the AI did is logged with the file, so your team can see exactly what it concluded and why.

An automated underwriting system scores the data it is given. It does not read documents or check that the data is right. Document-reading tools pull data off pages and stop there. Apex does the work around both: it reads the documents, validates the data, underwrites to the guidelines, builds the conditions and works them.

Every type of mortgage: conventional, FHA, VA, USDA, jumbo, non-QM including bank statement and DSCR loans, portfolio loans, HELOCs and second mortgages, and business-purpose loans such as fix-and-flip. The same is true for SonarOps.

Yes. We have full APIs and open them up depending on your deployment. In some cases lenders have built their own systems with Sonar as the invisible back end, connected entirely by API. If that is of interest, get in touch.

Apex lets the team you have handle more volume, so you can grow without hiring. It takes the reading, chasing and checking off their plates, and leaves them the judgment calls and the customer relationships.

On loan volume, not seats. The details depend on your deployment, so we scope pricing with you after a demo.

We do the processing, underwriting, closing and post-closing work. You provide the guidelines and underwriting criteria, sign off on the loan, and fund it. Your loan officers, your borrower relationships and your brand stay with you.

You do. We underwrite to your guidelines and criteria, and your institution signs off and funds.

Most mortgage outsourcing moves the work to cheaper people, often offshore. We moved most of the work to AI and kept experienced, US-based mortgage professionals on the parts that need judgment. That is why our goal is to make your mortgage business a profit center, and not simply to lower the cost of each hour worked.

Our own team of experienced mortgage professionals, always based in the United States. Nothing in SonarOps is offshore. Because AI does most of the file work, staffing is not a constraint for us, which is what allows us to absorb your volume as it moves.

No. Sonar sits in the background, the way your other technology providers do. Everything the borrower sees carries your brand, and the SonarOps team works as an extension of your own.

Yes. We can take on processing, underwriting, closing or post-closing on their own, or all of them together, and we are open to taking on more if you need it.

SonarOps is happy to consider hiring members of your team during onboarding. We understand that continuity matters, and that you already have strong people on your team.

When rates drop and applications pile up, SonarOps absorbs the volume. When the market slows, you are not carrying a back office built for the peak. Your mortgage cost rises and falls with the loans you close, and you stop hiring and laying off with every rate cycle. Our paper on cyclicality covers this in detail.

Mostly on outcomes. We scope onboarding and volume with you up front. SonarOps engagements are multi-year partnerships, because we are building an operation around your business.

Sonar is SOC 2 Type II, independently audited. Data is encrypted in transit and encrypted at rest with AES-256, with a further layer of field-level encryption on the most sensitive fields. Every customer has a dedicated database, never mixed with another lender’s. Outside security firms test our code and infrastructure on a regular schedule. More on security.

By default, your data never leaves our SOC 2 audited environments and never leaves the United States.

Yes, fully. Everything the AI does on a file is logged with the file, so your compliance team can review exactly what was done and why.

Our AI underwrites to your rules and guidelines, people make the final decisions, and every action is on the record. That gives your compliance team the same visibility into AI work that it has into a person’s.

We expect a thorough vendor review, and we are happy to share our reports and answer your team’s questions as part of due diligence.

It depends on the deployment, because each one is configured to your company. We have customers up and running within a few weeks, and others that take longer. Apex ranges from two weeks to a few months depending on how much customization you want. SonarOps takes longer, because we are standing up an operation with you.

We onboard a limited number of customers at a time, first come, first served.

For Apex, yes. We are happy to prove it out with a pilot on your own loans. SonarOps is different: it means building a team and an operation around your business, so it is not something we pilot. If you want to see the technology at work first, start with Apex and expand to SonarOps from there.

Request a demo. We will learn how you run today, show you Sonar on a real loan file, and put together a plan for your deployment.