Elio Mortgage is building a technology-enabled mortgage brokerage designed to help loan officers spend less time on administrative work and more time advising borrowers and generating business. Its platform brings together borrower applications, financial information, income calculations, pricing, customer relationships, and loan management around an evidence-based mortgage profile that connects loan data with the documents supporting it. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Elio Mortgage Co-Founder and COO Arad Lev Ari to learn more about his background, the company’s origins, its technology, and its approach to using AI and automation to improve mortgage origination.
Arad Lev Ari’s Background
When asked about his background, Lev Ari shared:
I started my career in investment banking at Deutsche Bank and then moved into real estate investing at KKR.
That gave me exposure to both the financial and operational sides of real estate transactions.
My co-founder, Oren Michaely, and I have known each other for more than 20 years.
He brings a background in AI from Microsoft and Motive Partners.
We brought those experiences together to build Elio, where I serve as co-founder and COO.
How Elio Mortgage Started
When asked how the idea for Elio came together, Lev Ari explained:
The idea came from my experience in real estate investing at KKR.
I saw how much time went into gathering information, checking it, and coordinating between parties to get a transaction done.
When Oren and I looked closely at residential mortgages, we found the same problem at an enormous scale.
A loan officer might be excellent at advising borrowers and bringing in business, but still spend much of the day chasing documents and moving a file through the process.
Companies compensate by adding more support staff, which makes growth expensive.
Combining my real estate experience with Oren’s background in AI, we saw an opportunity to build a mortgage company around a different division of work between people and technology.
AI could handle more of the operational work, giving loan officers more time to advise clients and grow their businesses.
Favorite Memory
When asked about his favorite memory working for Elio so far, Lev Ari said:
My favorite memory is a week we spent together in early September at the Marriott on Hutchinson Island, Florida.
We flew in our engineers, and Oren and I joined Steven, our Chief Brokerage Officer, and several loan officers.
There were about 15 of us working together in one large room.
The engineers could see the loan officers’ work minute by minute: listening to client calls, looking over their shoulders, and understanding what it actually takes to move a loan forward.
The loan officers could turn around, explain a problem, or ask for a feature, and work through it directly with the people building the technology.
The feedback was immediate.
We worked late, ordered food together, and made time for team activities.
There was a lot of energy in the room, and spending that much time together helped everyone understand each other’s work.
For me, that week captured the thesis behind Elio: bringing a strong engineering team inside an operating mortgage business.
Seeing how much progress that collaboration could unlock in such a concentrated period made us even more excited about what we’re building.
Core Products And Features
When asked about Elio’s core products and features, Lev Ari explained:
Elio helps people finance a home purchase or refinance, with access to dozens of lenders and a loan officer guiding them through the process.
Behind that experience, we’re building a platform that brings together borrower applications, financial information, income calculations, pricing, customer relationships, and loan management.
A central feature is an evidence-based mortgage profile: a structured picture of each loan that connects the information and calculations to the documents supporting them.
That creates a foundation for automating more of the work involved in getting a loan closed.
Through Elio Embedded, we also help financial advisors, real estate businesses, and homebuilders offer mortgage services to their customers without building an entire mortgage operation themselves.
Navigating A Slower Mortgage Market
When asked about recent challenges in the mortgage sector, Lev Ari said:
High mortgage rates have limited refinancing opportunities and slowed the home purchase market.
For loan officers, that means fewer transactions and a more challenging environment for growing their businesses.
We’ve responded by investing in support that helps our loan officers generate business.
We brought in a mortgage coach to help them develop their sales techniques and become more effective at winning business in the current market.
Our recent rebrand has also been an opportunity to give loan officers stronger marketing support.
We developed a distinctive brand and a set of professional design assets, and our team helps loan officers use those assets to create marketing materials for their own outreach.
That gives them a consistent, professional presence without having to develop everything themselves.
Together, these efforts help loan officers strengthen their businesses and make the most of the opportunities available in a slower market.
How Elio’s Technology Has Evolved
When asked how Elio’s technology has evolved since launching, Lev Ari explained:
We launched publicly in September, but development began earlier.
Between May and September, we built a functioning loan origination platform that can support a loan from application through closing.
The foundation is a shared data model that keeps the facts about a loan connected to their supporting evidence.
We’ve built tools around that foundation for income calculations, pricing, relationship management, and other work loan officers do every day.
Our next phase is expanding adoption across the brokerage and developing more automation around that shared information, including evaluating loans against different investors’ requirements.
Key Company Milestones
When asked about Elio’s most significant milestones, Lev Ari highlighted:
We’ve raised $5.1 million, brought together approximately 40 loan officers, and expanded our licensing footprint to 23 states.
We’ve also built a functioning origination platform that is being used to move real loans through the process.
Getting the technology into daily use is a particularly meaningful milestone.
It gives us direct feedback on what works, what needs improvement, and where automation can make the biggest difference.
Customer Success Story
When asked to share a specific customer success story, Lev Ari highlighted one of Elio’s loan officers:
Buddy, one of our loan officers, grew up working with customers at his parents’ bait and tackle shop.
He built his mortgage business from scratch, putting in the legwork to develop relationships and bring in clients.
What he values about Elio is being able to keep doing what he does best, with the team and technology supporting the work behind each loan.
In his words: “At Elio I get to stay that person, outward facing, instead of living in the files, the tech, and the admin.”
He also credits Elio’s model with helping him earn more from the volume he produces.
For us, that combination captures what we’re building: giving loan officers the support to spend more time with people, grow their businesses, and keep more of what they earn.
Funding
When asked about funding and revenue metrics, Lev Ari said:
We raised $5.1 million in pre-seed funding co-led by Motive Partners and Social Leverage, with participation from Jeff Horing, co-founder of Insight Partners, and other angel investors.
The funding supports product development, expansion of our licensed mortgage operations, and recruitment of loan officers.
Our business earns revenue when mortgages close.
As we grow, our focus is on increasing the volume we can support while reducing the operational work required for each loan.
Total Addressable Market
When asked about Elio’s total addressable market, Lev Ari explained:
We’re pursuing the U.S. residential mortgage market, which represents roughly $2 trillion in annual originations.
That includes both home purchases and refinancings.
Our revenue opportunity comes from the fees associated with originating those loans.
We reach borrowers through loan officers and through businesses that already have trusted customer relationships and recurring mortgage needs.
The size of the market matters, but so does the amount of manual work involved.
Improving the economics of each transaction creates a substantial opportunity even without changing the underlying mortgage product.
Competitive Differentiation
When asked what differentiates Elio from its competition, Lev Ari said:
We build the technology and operate the mortgage business together.
That gives us the ability to change the workflow, the support model, and the economics of originating a loan.
Our engineers see the same issues our loan officers encounter, and improvements can be tested in the operation.
Over time, that should allow each loan officer to serve more borrowers with less administrative work.
We also combine that operating model with embedded distribution.
Partners bring customer relationships and mortgage demand, while Elio provides the technology and people needed to deliver the service.
Future Goals
When asked about Elio’s future goals, Lev Ari explained:
Our immediate priorities are growing the loan officer network, expanding into more states, and making our embedded partnerships a meaningful source of business.
On the technology side, we’re focused on getting the entire brokerage onto our platform and automating more of the work across the loan lifecycle.
We want to demonstrate that we can grow loan volume without adding support costs at the same pace.
Longer term, we see an opportunity for the same verified information to carry further through the lending process, reducing repeated analysis and making it easier to connect loans with the right capital providers.
The goal is a simpler experience for borrowers and a more efficient business behind it.
