The argument that fair lending and profitable business are fundamentally in tension has been around for as long as the mortgage industry has. Pavan Agarwal has been building the counterargument for years. The numbers behind that work are now public.
Sun West Mortgage Company, the national lender Agarwal leads, operates with what it describes as a no-additional-overlays policy. Overlays are supplementary credit requirements that individual lenders add beyond what federal agencies and government-sponsored enterprises actually mandate. While they are common and legally permitted, they disproportionately affect borrowers with non-traditional income, thinner credit files, or backgrounds the industry has historically underserved. Every lender that uses them has a reason. Agarwal has chosen not to, at the level of institutional policy.
