Parekh also discusses market growth, fraud trends, and capital market liquidity heading into the second half of the year
For most of the past two decades, technology was a major differentiator in the mortgage industry. Lenders who built faster platforms, better underwriting engines, and smoother borrower interfaces had a real competitive edge.
Artificial intelligence is changing that. The tools that once took significant capital and technical expertise to build are now accessible to almost anyone, and the timeline to develop them has collapsed.
Lenders who built their business on relationships, product depth, and institutional experience are finding the shift easier to navigate than those whose advantage was purely technological.
Ketan Parekh (pictured top), managing director and head of US lender relations and capital markets at Toorak Capital Partners, said the technology edge that defined private lending for years is no longer sufficient on its own.
"We're coming into the first time that technology is not going to be the differentiating factor on how you succeed," Parekh told Mortgage Professional America. "With the tools that are coming out with the AI and everything that's coming to market, the last 15, 20 years, you could differentiate. You could do the same thing I can now, for the most part. Or you can develop something in a fairly short period of time for not a lot of cost."
Building dynamic relationships
The relationship dynamic runs through every level of the business, Parekh said, from how Toorak works with its lending partners to how its own loan officers interact with borrowers.
"We're moving into a world where it's actually good for somebody like us," he said. "Going back to the basics of business, like relationships and product development. These things that are obviously again value add to the market."
On the direct lending side, a meaningful portion of Toorak's salespeople have personal experience flipping houses. Parekh said that background gives them credibility with borrowers that a faster platform cannot provide.
"They act as educators to the borrowers that they're working with," he said. "And they built a good relationship. If a deal comes in and they present it like, ‘Are you sure you want to do this deal? It doesn't really look like it's going to work out that well.’ You're not just trying to take their business and then leave them to go."
That kind of candor is what brings borrowers back, Parekh said. Even when rates are not the lowest available, the honest guidance on a deal that does not pencil out is what they remember.
"Somebody else may have a little cheaper terms, but they don't have the best experience,” he said. “Then they realize, ‘I'm going to come back to (Toorak).’ I realize it's going to cost me more, but borrowers generally get it. At the end of the day, they need less friction to do what they need to do."
Second half of 2026 preview
Parekh said the market is growing into the second half of 2026, but not at the pace some might expect. The next gains will come through better businesses taking share from weaker ones rather than through overall market expansion.
"I don't necessarily see the market exponentially growing at this point," he said. "You're going to see growth through better businesses offering a kind of value add to customers that are potentially taking some share from other companies."
AI plays a supporting role in that process, Parekh said. Toorak uses it to sift through deals faster and flag ones likely to create problems.
"The tools that we use in AI or other things to help us pick, sift through deals a lot quicker, make our business more efficient," he said. "We can quickly say no to a deal that we think we're going to have long-term problems."
Another major issue that remains a hot topic, especially in the private lender space, is fraud. The challenge is trying to stay one step ahead of the bad actors in the space.
"Fraud's a hard thing to detect," he said. "I get burned on one thing, and I put that into my operating model to detect. The fraudster is going to come up with the next thing to sort of do that. It's something that we can do our best to capture red flags to make good decisions, but it's something that's not fully unavoidable."
On capital markets, liquidity has held up despite the volatility of early 2026, Parekh said. Banks have not pulled back on facilities, and securitization markets remain open. However, Parekh warns that one major unexpected event could change all of that.
"I worry that some trigger event happens," he said. "That's one thing that keeps me up at night because that's certainly something that could change how we operate."
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