Halfway through underwriting, the borrower texts you: “Hey, where are we on the loan?” You answer it. Twenty minutes later you get the same question from the same borrower’s spouse. The next morning the buyer’s realtor asks the same thing. By the end of the file you have answered “where are we” thirty times, and not one of those messages moved the loan forward by a minute.
Mortgage Circles is the borrower-facing mobile app that ships with BNTouch and makes most of those messages stop. The borrower sees the status, sees the documents, signs the disclosures, and chats with you in one place. It is your loan status surface, not theirs to chase.
Mortgage Circles is the customer-facing mobile app branded separately from BNTouch. The team’s videos use the name consistently across product walkthroughs: “Upon logging into Mortgage Circles is the dashboard.” The borrower downloads Mortgage Circles, not BNTouch. The naming separation is deliberate. Your borrowers do not need to know what your CRM is called.
What it is: a borrower portal with loan status, document upload and e-sign, push notifications for milestone changes, and chat with MAIA (the AI assistant) and the LO.
What it is not: a public-facing real estate app, a credit monitoring app, or a generic mortgage shopping app. Mortgage Circles is the working surface for an existing borrower-LO relationship, not a top-of-funnel acquisition channel.
The dashboard, in one paragraph
From the demo: “Upon logging into Mortgage Circles is the dashboard.” The first screen the borrower sees on each open. Loan status milestone, current step, any pending documents, any pending signatures, and a chat shortcut. Designed for the question your borrower is actually asking, which is “what is the next thing I need to do.”
Document storage and e-sign inside the app
This is the use case that earns the install. The borrower can:
See documents the LO has shared. “Document storage and sharing list. This list will show files that you and the client have shared.”
Upload documents from the phone. Tax returns, pay stubs, bank statements. Photograph and submit from the phone camera.
E-sign disclosures and forms. “Tap, fill out any signature fields and tap sign document at the bottom of the page. You can also download or print the document using the menu.”
See documents pending their signature. “Documents that your loan officer has requested that need to be signed electronically and that you have uploaded.”
The full document workflow happens inside the app. No emailing PDFs. No printing, signing, scanning, returning. The borrower’s friction is measured in taps, not in finding their printer.
Push notifications: the part that kills the status questions
The push notification mechanic is what ends the “where are we” message thread. When a milestone updates on the loan officer side (via the LOS integration or manually), the system can fire a push notification straight to the borrower’s app, plus an email. The team’s framing: “Via email or via a push notification through the Mortgage Circles mobile app.” And from a different demo: “A push, an email can go out to them, and a push notification go out to them, on their app and they can see status change.”
The standard cadence we recommend setting up:
Application received → push.
Conditional approval → push.
Appraisal ordered → push.
Appraisal received → push.
Clear to close → push.
Closing scheduled → push.
Each push includes a one-line plain-English version of the milestone, not the raw LOS code. “Appraisal received” beats “MS_3.2.7_APPR_RECV” every time. You configure the human-readable version in the campaign step.
The chat-with-MAIA layer
The borrower can chat with MAIA from inside the Mortgage Circles app. From the demo: “You can also chat with [MAIA] your mortgage AI assistant by tapping the speech bubble icon.”
What the borrower can ask MAIA in the app:
“What is the next step on my loan?”
“When does my rate lock expire?”
“What documents do you still need from me?”
“Can you remind me when closing is?”
MAIA reads the borrower’s record and answers from the data. The borrower does not have to text the LO every time. The LO is not interrupted on questions that are already in the CRM.
If MAIA cannot answer (uncommon edge cases, complex underwriting questions), the chat routes to the LO. The handoff is built into the flow.
The brand mechanic loan officers under-use
Mortgage Circles is co-brandable. The mobile app the borrower downloads is technically Mortgage Circles, but when the borrower opens it, the experience is wrapped in your lender brand. Logo, colors, contact information, LO photo. Your brand sits on top of the product, which is the right architecture for a B2B2C surface.
This matters because the app is in the borrower’s hand for the full life of the loan, then again at every milestone (loan anniversary, equity alert, refinance opportunity). It is a passive retention surface that compounds over multiple loans.
Three workflows we have seen working teams build
Workflow 1: silent status updates
Every milestone update in the LOS fires a push notification to the borrower via Mortgage Circles. The LO sets up the campaign step trigger once and the system runs for every borrower automatically. Result: status questions to the LO drop materially.
Workflow 2: document collection sprint
When the underwriter requests conditions, the LO uploads the request list to the borrower’s Mortgage Circles document storage. The borrower gets a push notification, opens the app, sees the request list with a checkbox per document, photographs and uploads from the phone. Three days for conditions instead of three weeks.
Workflow 3: post-close retention
After closing, the borrower keeps the app installed because it is the easiest way to access their loan documents, request payoff statements, and see their loan anniversary reminders. When the equity alert fires three years later, the borrower opens the app, sees a push notification from their LO, and takes a refinance call from someone they already trust.
Setup, in order
Configure your lender branding for the Mortgage Circles app (logo, colors, contact info, LO photos).
Send your active borrowers the download link.
Set up the push notification campaign steps for each milestone you want to broadcast.
Configure your e-sign preset requests so the document send takes one click instead of five.
Tell every new borrower at application time that Mortgage Circles is how you will communicate going forward.
Step five is the one most loan officers skip. The app gets installed but not opened because the borrower was not told it was the working surface. Frame it on the first call.
See Mortgage Circles from the borrower seat
Ask the team to walk you through Mortgage Circles from a sample borrower account, not from the LO seat. The borrower experience is the one you need to evaluate. Request a demo and ask for the borrower-side walkthrough specifically.
