Google Cloud today announced the launch of Lending DocAI, its first dedicated service for the mortgage industry. The tool, which is now in preview, is meant to help mortgage companies speed up the process of evaluating a borrower’s income and asset documents, using specialized machine learning models to automate routine document reviews.
Some of this may sound familiar, because, with Document AI, Google Cloud already offers a more general tool for performing OCR over complex documents and then extracting data from those. Lending DocAI is essentially the first vertically specialized Google Cloud service to use this technology.
“Our goal is to give you the right tools to help borrowers and lenders have a better experience and to close mortgage loans in shorter time frames, benefiting all parties involved,” writes Google product manager Sudheera Vanguri. “With Lending DocAI, you will reduce mortgage processing time and costs, streamline data capture, and support regulatory and compliance requirements.”
Google argues that its tool will have speed up the mortgage workflow process and improve the experience for borrowers, too. If you’ve ever gone through the mortgage process, you know how much time it takes to compile all of the necessary documents and how much lag there is before your bank or mortgage broker tells you that everything is in order (or not).
In addition, Google Cloud also argues that this technology can help “reduce risk and enhance compliance posture by leveraging a technology stack (e.g. data access controls and transparency, data residency, customer managed encryption keys) that reduces the risk of implementing an AI strategy.”
In many ways, this new product is a good example for Google Cloud’s current strategy under the leadership of its CEO Thomas Kurian. While it continues to develop a plethora of general services for developers at every level, it now also bundles these together to sell as complete solutions to enterprises in various verticals. That’s where Google Cloud believes it can generate the most benefit for these companies — and hence generate the most revenue. With industry solutions for retailers, telcos, gaming companies and more — and industry partners to help them get up to speed — Kurian and his team believe that they can offer solutions while its competitors focus on offering tools. So far, that strategy seems to be working out alright, with Google Cloud’s revenue growing over 43 percent in the last quarter.