Satisfaction held at 760 while Bruce Gehrke flags rising issues at the last major touchpoint
Mortgage customer satisfaction has held its ground in a market that has given borrowers plenty to worry about, from volatile rates to a tough housing market.
Beneath the steady overall result, the places where borrowers say things go wrong are moving toward the end of the process.
That puts pressure on the final stretch, when a loan officer's job is to make sure nothing surprises the client at the closing table.
Bruce Gehrke (pictured top), senior director of wealth and lending intelligence at JD Power, said overall satisfaction in the company's 2026 US Mortgage Origination Satisfaction Study, released Tuesday, was unchanged at 760 on a 1,000-point scale. Issues raised at closing rose this year, he said.
"That is that last major touchpoint in the process and tends to stay with borrowers longer when they think about the process in retrospect," Gehrke told Mortgage Professional America.
Steady score, shifting problems
Last year's 33-point jump was the biggest in any JD Power mortgage study in roughly 12 to 15 years, Gehrke said. Chase ranked highest this year at 789, followed by Bank of America at 788 and PNC at 785.
"I expected this year to be down to sort of correct a little bit," Gehrke said.
Satisfaction in mortgage is among the highest JD Power measures across financial services, he said.
"I think it speaks well for the industry, given the market, the challenges out there, the financial challenges, the challenges in the housing market," Gehrke said. "They're delivering."
Several measures of the personal side of the experience moved lower, he said, including trust and communication. Fewer borrowers also say they have a main point of contact, 88% against 91% a year ago, according to the study.
"Not a big drop, but they're falling back slightly. Not something that says, ‘Hey, this is a real problem.’ But it's a hint at it, and it's consistent across these," Gehrke said.
Among borrowers who had problems, a greater share cite them after approval or on closing day, according to the study. The study also asks whether lenders honored their promises, especially on rates, points and pricing, Gehrke said.
Rate volatility did not stand out as the cause, he said, and problems tied to rates were at the same level as the past two or three years.
"Consumers aren't always clear about what a locked rate is and what a locked rate isn't and what happens and all of that," Gehrke said. "As much as it's explained, sometimes they tend to hear what they want to hear on things like that."
Younger borrowers shop around
The sample is skewing younger, Gehrke said, with Millennials and Gen Z making up about 61% of respondents.
"That's the customer of the future. And they are significantly different than Gen X and especially Boomers," Gehrke said.
The pattern shows up across financial services, Gehrke said, and not only in mortgage, where younger customers are more likely to step outside existing relationships.
"Just because I may have bank accounts at Chase or Bank of America doesn't mean I'm going to automatically use them for a mortgage," Gehrke said.
In home equity lending, most of the volume still sits with banks, he said, but newer players are taking share.
"A lot of that is younger borrowers, and they're more inclined to look for deals, and they're not locked in," Gehrke said. "They'll look at two, three, four different lenders at a much higher percentage than the older borrowers do.”
That includes not following the customary referral path many originators depend on. While this could provide a challenge for originators who rely on that path, for those who have branched out to new types of referrals like AI-based ones, it could provide an opportunity.
"If you think of the traditional real estate realtor to loan officer relationship, they're going to step outside of that more often than older demographics in the borrowing process," Gehrke said. "So I think that's a key perspective from that lead generation and conversion up front."
Gehrke credited the market itself for part of this year's high scores, even with the headwinds borrowers face.
"It is tremendously competitive right now for new loans. And I think that, you know, the borrower is benefiting from that," Gehrke said. "Across the board, they're just getting a better experience. They're getting more attention. Volumes are lower, so there's not a capacity problem."
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