Built Technologies AI Draw Agent handles billions in CRE lending

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If you rent an apartment, you’ve probably “talked” to an AI agent to help get your leaky toilet fixed. But what if you’re a builder making a request for funds from your lender? That’s a much more complicated process — and there’s an AI agent for that now as well. 

Built Technologies, a provider of construction and real estate finance technology that reached a $1.5 billion valuation in 2021, is taking its proprietary software to the next level, unveiling an AI agent that has been in the testing phase with a few of its lender clients. Now, Built says, it’s ready for the broader market. 

“We’re trying to improve that ecosystem up and down the value chain of the construction real estate industry,” said Chase Gilbert, CEO of Built Technologies. 

This agent is being implemented specifically for what’s known in the business as draw requests. Traditionally, as a developer or construction firm completes each leg of the process, they ask their lender for the next stage of financing, the draw. That usually takes days or weeks to process, because the loan officers have to review documentation, verify progress, assess risk, and approve disbursements. Now the so-called Draw Agent will take over.

“There is an opportunity to fundamentally serve the ecosystem, and we actually purpose-built technology to connect the key stakeholders, where everyone’s looking at the same information at the same time and can request funds or can make a payment with more confidence,” said Gilbert. 

Over the past decade, Built has been working with lenders, both bank and non-bank, as well as those in the private credit space, to help them manage capital improvement construction projects and get their money faster and more easily from their capital partners. 

Clients include U.S. Bank, Citi and Fifth Third. Built also helps with payments to downstream trade partners, like general contractors, subcontractors, architects, attorneys and designers. That was the original software.

Enter AI, and now Built has created what Gilbert calls an embedded teammate that can do all that work and guarantee that it’s all compliant because there is no human margin of error. Built has been testing the agent with a few of its lenders, including Anchor Loans, for the last three months. 

It is now reporting 95% faster draw approvals with reviews completed in as few as 3 minutes, a 400% increase in risk detection versus human-led reviews, and 100% adherence to each lender’s policies and procedures.

Companies using the new agent reported a 300% to 500% return on investment (ROI), even on portfolios as small as about 500 loans, according to Built. Companies came to that finding by comparing the time and operational cost savings generated through automation against their investment. Lenders in the pilot said they saw significant reductions in manual workload, increasing efficiencies without having to hire new people. 

Gilbert said the AI agent is acting on trillions of dollars worth of construction draw data that Built has compiled over the last decade. 

“And that’s where AI really shines. It needs a lot of data and context in order to get smart and make decisions, and we certainly have a lot of proprietary data on that,” he said.