I recently had the pleasure of attending the 2025 NPLA Conference in Miami, where industry leaders gathered to discuss key trends shaping private lending. The event drew an impressive turnout, providing an excellent opportunity to engage in meaningful conversations about the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Key Themes
Several key themes emerged from the conference that private lenders should be mindful of:
Tariffs are front and center.
- Costs for imported materials necessary for construction and rehab projects will rise when tariffs take effect, leading to increased costs for financing such projects. Lenders must be mindful of the tariff implications and navigate the market accordingly.
Bad actors are a black eye to the private lending industry.
- Every instance of fraud or unethical business practices—whether by a broker, lender, or other party—creates headwinds for the industry. While reputable players far outnumber bad actors, it’s essential for private lenders and brokers to operate with integrity and distance themselves from those who do not. One way to counter bad actors is through better integration of brokers in the origination process; by working more closely together, transparency improves, and unethical behavior can be quickly identified and addressed.
Increase in Private Lending securitization is a tide that raises all boats.
- Once only commonplace amongst financial institutions, securitization is now gaining further traction in the private lending industry. Such access to capital serves both borrowers and lenders; increased securitization leads to more capital which results in more origination and different product offerings. Investor demand for private lenders’ loans, e.g., non-QM, RTL, continues to grow and is a market force that appears here to stay.
Artificial intelligence: the Good, Bad, and the Ugly.
- I had the pleasure of speaking on “The Data Advantage” panel at the conference where a discussion on AI was had. AI has been the topic du jour across nearly all industries over the last few years. Whether businesses, including lenders, are trying to find efficiencies or reduce costs, the prevalence and seeming reliance on AI has both benefits and (major) risks. For example, AI can certainly augment a lender’s business by more efficiently collating and presenting data used during the underwriting process; that, coupled with human oversight and informed application of what AI produces can certainly be of value and good for the lender. However, what AI lacks is accountability. What AI produces, be it a data set, answers a market query, or drafts legal language, can only be reasonably relied on as suggestive; proper scrutiny and analysis of what AI produces is not only necessary, but also implicitly expected. As I noted during the panel – imagine a lender sitting before a regulator to answer for legal deficiencies in the lender’s loan documentation, which was produced by AI. The lender did not have (live) attorney vetting of what AI produced. Who will ultimately be accountable – AI or the lender? Clearly, the latter. That’s where it gets bad, and ugly, for the lender. That said, AI and automation are not the same thing. Lenders can and should rely on automation when it comes to loan documentation—specifically, automation that ensures legal compliance and is backed by industry expertise.
GoDocs' Solution
This is exactly where GoDocs comes in. Along with my colleague Blake Bell at the GoDocs booth, we had the opportunity to connect with industry professionals and demonstrate how our cloud-based automation transforms the loan documentation process. Our platform doesn’t just integrate seamlessly with lenders’ existing origination practices—it also empowers them to scale and be even more competitive amongst their peers by cutting time to close and drastically reducing costs passed along to the borrower.
With our market expertise and unwavering commitment to 50-state compliance, GoDocs enables our customers to generate legally compliant, attorney-quality commercial loan documents in seconds. The effect: lenders can scale faster, and in a more cost-effective manner, while ensuring their documents meet the highest standards of protection.
Historically, comprehensive loan documents of this caliber were accessible only to financial institutions—but GoDocs is changing that. By democratizing access to industry-leading loan documentation, we empower private lenders with the tools they need to drive scalability, efficiency, and cost savings, all while maintaining compliance and document integrity.
Senior Director of Legal and Compliance at GoDocs
When choosing a commercial loan closing document solution, the allure of a low upfront cost can be tempting. But what if that “software” is just a lead-generation tool for a law firm?
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