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AI & Technology Why Commonwealth Cost Calculator InsightsDo you know what it costs you to close one loan?
Most lenders have a number they quote and a number that is true. Finding the gap between them is where operational consulting starts, and it is usually the cheapest margin you will ever recover.
Cost to originate · Operational audit · Workflow and capacity · Launch support
File flow in, profitability out.
An operational audit begins with how a file actually moves through your shop (not the diagram, the reality) and ends with where the margin is going.
Cost to originate
What does it genuinely cost to put a loan on your books? The answer sets your minimum profit margin and exposes which steps are consuming it. Without this number, efficiency work is guesswork with a spreadsheet attached.
Operational audit
A review of file flows across every department, surfacing the handoffs where loans sit waiting on someone. Strengths and weaknesses documented plainly, with the ones worth fixing separated from the ones worth living with.
Capacity and staffing
How much volume your current team can carry, where it breaks, and what the fixed-cost consequences are when the market turns. This is the analysis that tells you whether to hire, train or contract.
Launch and training
New channel, new product or new agency approval: we stay from the initial review through to operational launch and staff training, rather than handing over a recommendation and leaving you to implement it.
Continuous improvement, not a one-off report.
Half a century of combined mortgage lending experience, applied to your operation rather than a template drawn from someone else’s.
Watch the file move
We follow real loans through your process and record where they stop. The delay is almost never in the step everyone blames, which is why opinion-led reorganisations tend to disappoint.
Put a number on it
Cost per loan, cost per step, and the cost of each day a file waits. Once the delay has a dollar figure attached, the argument about priorities tends to settle itself.
Recommend what you can run
Changes that fit the staff and systems you actually have. A redesign requiring headcount you cannot justify in a soft market is not a recommendation, it is a wish.
Stay through launch
Implementation, training and the first weeks of live operation. Most consulting value is lost in the gap between the report and the day the new process meets a real pipeline.
Fixed cost is the enemy of a cyclical business.
Volume moves, payroll does not. A senior underwriter at a $95,000 base costs roughly $147,500 fully loaded, which lands near $681 a file at full utilisation, and nobody runs at full utilisation through a cycle. Knowing your real cost per loan is what makes the fixed-versus-variable decision answerable.
Start with the number you do not have.
A cost to originate analysis is a contained piece of work with a concrete output, and it tends to pay for itself in what it exposes.