Figure is bringing the mortgage market on chain

Go Figure.

Getting a mortgage has traditionally meant navigating one of the slowest, most paper-heavy processes in American finance — a maze of documents, middlemen and repeated manual checks that can take months to complete.

But Figure, a fintech firm based in New York that went public in September, is rerouting the entire system by moving it on-chain, making the process both faster and cheaper.

Origination can happen in five days — instead of the typical 45 — and costs roughly $1,000 instead of the usual $12,000.

“This is blockchain actually lowering costs and helping people,” CEO Michael Tannenbaum, 38, told NYNext. “This is the future of capital markets.”

In Washington and on Wall Street, momentum is growing to move antiquated financial infrastructure on-chain, where ownership is transparent, standardized and instantly transferable. Few companies are doing that work at scale, but Figure — which has originated nearly $18 billion in mortgages and other real-world assets since launch in 2018 — is one of them. 

Figure now accounts for roughly 75% of all loans being originated and recorded on the blockchain, a young but fast-growing segment of the market known as tokenization. More than 200 institutions — including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Sixth Street, Jefferies, Guaranteed Rate and CrossCountry Mortgage — now use Figure’s infrastructure to originate, register and trade loans; those products are rated Triple-A by both S&P and Moody’s.

In the traditional mortgage system, every institution has its own forms, workflows and requirements. Each time a loan is bought or sold, the process effectively starts from scratch.

Figure eliminates the mishegoss by standardizing everything. Instead of bespoke paperwork, every loan is created with the same data and documentation.

The company leverages AI to read complex trust and LLC documents, extract the relevant data and write it on-chain in a tamper-proof digital record. Key details become instantly visible and verifiable to any approved buyer, removing the back-and-forth that normally drags out approvals.

Because every loan follows the same digital structure, Figure can route them through a marketplace of its own creation. 

“Almost like what the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq have done for equities, we’ve created standardization in this market for trading equities,” Tannenbaum said. “That didn’t exist prior to Figure.”

The public market has voted confidence, too. When Figure IPO’d this fall on the NASDAQ stock exchange, its shares were priced at about $25 but opened closer to $36 — where they continue to trade today. 

In its first earnings report, posted in November, Figure recorded $156 million in net revenue and nearly $2.5 billion in consumer-loan marketplace volume for the quarter. Its year-over-year net income growth was more than 200%.

“The tailwinds from this administration have been helpful,” Tannenbaum said of new legislation such as the proposed Genius Act for stablecoins, which signals Washington’s growing belief in the blockchain as a legitimate, long-term piece of financial market infrastructure.

“A year ago, if you talked about blockchain in a board meeting, you’d be laughed out of the room,” he continued. “Now, if you aren’t talking about it, there’s a serious problem.”

That institutional embrace has downstream effects for Wall Street and ordinary borrowers alike.

Using a new Figure tool, Intellidebt, borrowers can pay off high-interest credit card debt directly, replacing rates in the 20t o 30% range with home-equity rates that typically sit between 7% and 9%. 

Because Figure’s system is automated and standardized, homeowners can access that equity in a matter of days. Tannenbaum said these customers are seeing their credit scores boosted by as many as 30 points in the process.

When he stepped into the CEO role in April 2024, Tannenbaum brought with him more than a decade of experience at SoFi and Brex — as well as questions he had been wrestling with since his time as a student at Columbia during the financial crisis.

“One of the reasons I was so drawn to Figure is because I think blockchain technology can help with these issues we saw in 2008 around loan ownership,” he said. “The dislocation was the opportunity.”

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Home equity, though, is just the beginning. The same infrastructure that streamlines mortgages and equity loans is already being used to originate and trade other forms of credit, from auto loans to small-business financing. Student-loan applications, too, are in testing.

“We see the entire capital market, private credit and beyond, as addressable with our technology,” Tannenbaum said. “It’s a $180 billion market — we’re just getting started.”

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