If you have ever had to apply for a mortgage, you know that it can be a time consuming and expensive process, and that it can be very painful.
The goal of bringing more technology to the process is to make it all less tedious and slow. We've seen a lot of startup companies building digital infrastructure to help these lenders deliver on a mortgage much faster than has been possible before.
Enter the room. The Philadelphia-based startup has developed an application programming interface that aims to bring together the various parties involved in the mortgage origination process. Staircase pledges to provide a better experience for borrowers and the companies that are providing the mortgage by integrating all these different parties.
It's a complicated transaction because of the number of entities and systems that must share and verify data. The lack of a universal language makes it more difficult. We are creating an integration layer that brings all of those parties together and makes all of the new mortgage related technologies available instantly.
Let's look at some numbers.
According to a recent report by the Mortgage Bankers Association, it takes an average of 45 days to get a mortgage loan, and the total loan production expenses totaled an average of $9,140 per loan in the third quarter of 2021. The time it takes to get a mortgage and the cost to originate a loan will be reduced by Staircase's ability to give every participant a way to talk to one another in just a few clicks.
Staircase was founded by Kalamchi and Soofi Safavi, who realized there was no clean set ofAPI infrastructure that was purpose-built for mortgage.
There are so many technologies out there that are amazing, but you have to integrate them one by one. They are all different, according to Kalamchi. The thing we are doing is to make it better, faster and cheaper. We want our product to be easy to integrate and stand on its own.
It is a lofty claim. A number of investors are willing to bet on something. The company has raised $24 million since it was founded, with the most recent funding round closing on 18 million dollars. The round had money put in it by RRE Ventures.
The Staircase team has been working hard to build a platform for developers that solve the most critical data, integration and workflows problems within the mortgage landscape. We were excited to back the company in this journey because we wanted to make it easier to access modern solutions without completely replacing legacy systems.
The creators of Staircase claim that their platform can help a wide range of entities, including government-sponsored enterprises and first-generation mortgage technology providers.
That is also appealing to Bessemer.
There have been some great new products that have enabled the mortgage industry to begin to provide more digital experiences to their end customers over the past several years but no true platform like Staircase to tie it all together and work with both innovative, digital-first as well as legacy providers in order to automate
Staircase plans to use part of its new capital to hire so it can continue developing its product. More than 40 engineers are employed by some employees.
Kalamchi said that it was all about product development, and maturation, and then going into the market and making sure the technology is helping borrowers.
