In this thought leadership piece for Finance Derivative, our CEO, Geert Van Kerckhoven, explores how Europe’s mortgage market has rebounded since the 2022–2023 rate shock—and why lenders now face a new kind of pressure. With 2025 marking a return to lending growth and improving borrower confidence, we see a clear shift: having a digital front end is no longer enough. While many banks have invested in apps, chatbots, affordability calculators, and digital ID checks, the real bottleneck remains hidden in the core of the mortgage process.
We highlight research showing that the biggest drop-off in digitalisation sits between document upload and credit decision, where underwriting still relies heavily on manual checks, fragmented workflows, and long email chains. In markets like Germany, most lenders still take more than a week to reach a final decision, and roughly a third take over two weeks. Our position is that specialised, well-governed AI in the back office is now a decisive competitive advantage: it can automate up to 90% of routine steps and improve time to decision by around 81%, turning documents into reliable data, clearing backlogs, and supporting underwriters on complex cases. Crucially, we stress that this doesn’t replace people—borrowers still want human contact. Instead, it frees advisors to focus on nuanced situations such as non-standard income, where human judgement and advice are essential.
Looking ahead, we argue that the European mortgage industry is moving from “digital” to truly “intelligent” operations, and that purpose-built AI in underwriting and documentation will become the new baseline for lenders who want to stay ahead of the curve. This perspective reinforces Oper’s role in shaping the future of mortgages across Europe: combining deep mortgage expertise with specialised AI that keeps human decision-makers firmly in control.
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