Bank of America, PNC share top ranking in Keynova’s 2026 home equity scorecard

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HousingWire reports that Bank of America and PNC have tied for the top spot in Keynova's 2026 home equity scorecard, a benchmarking study that tracks lender performance across digital experience, product offerings, and operational speed. The most notable shift in this year's data is that one-third of lenders now offer accelerated home equity closing and funding, a meaningful increase from the prior year. That growth in speed reflects broader pressure on traditional institutions to compress timelines that have historically stretched across weeks.

For borrowers who have watched big banks race to shorten their own processes, the news highlights a gap that still exists between consumer expectations and what many lenders actually deliver. loantrust.ai operates directly in that space, not by competing on the same infrastructure but by replacing it with a single licensed MLO who personally packages every file rather than routing it through a call center. The approach applies across DSCR programs for rental property investors, fix and flip financing, bridge loans, new construction, multifamily, and bank statement programs for self-employed borrowers, each structured around the timeline and documentation realities of the deal rather than a standardized institutional workflow.

The shift toward faster equity access matters most to investors and self-employed borrowers whose opportunities carry expiration dates. A compressed closing window does not help if the underwriting model itself excludes non-traditional income or if the file sits in a queue between anonymous handlers. loantrust.ai functions as a dedicated partner rather than a transactional call center, which means the same originator who understands the property cash flow or the bank statement pattern also controls the packaging. That continuity becomes its own form of speed when the alternative is restarting the explanation at every handoff.