New American Funding AI Visibility Market Strategy Report - Mortgage

Answer Capsule

New American Funding holds 14.86% valid recommendation coverage in the October 2026 LLM Authority Index mortgage benchmark, ranking fifth of six tracked lenders. The company appears in 16.80% of qualified AI responses but converts that presence into a valid recommendation only 14.86% of the time, a conversion gap that has widened across the four-month measurement series. The clearest weakness is a 13.9-point coverage decline since the July 2026 baseline, the steepest drop of any tracked brand. The clearest opportunity is rebuilding presence in the Brand Recommendation cluster, where the company lost 103 valid recommendations between July and October 2026.

Who This Report Is For

This report is for New American Funding's marketing, brand, and growth leadership, and for mortgage category analysts tracking how AI-generated recommendations are reshaping lender discovery and shortlist formation.

Report Card

Executive Summary

New American Funding is visible in AI-generated mortgage guidance but is not being recommended at a rate that matches its presence. The company recorded 104 mentions across 619 qualified observations in October 2026, a raw mention presence rate of 16.80%, yet it received valid recommendation credit in only 92 observations, or 14.86% coverage. That conversion rate places it fifth of six tracked lenders, ahead of only Freedom Mortgage.

The company's recommendation position has deteriorated steadily since the July 2026 baseline. Valid recommendation coverage fell from 28.80% in July 2026 to 14.86% in October 2026, a decline of 13.9 points and the steepest drop of any tracked brand. The decline was presence-led: raw mention presence fell 14.0 points over the same period, from 30.80% to 16.80%. Valid recommendation counts fell from 195 in July 2026 to 92 in October 2026.

The strongest signal in the data is sentiment quality. New American Funding recorded a net sentiment score of 0.8846, the highest of any tracked lender, with 92 positive mentions, 12 neutral mentions, and zero negative mentions. When the company does appear in AI responses, the framing is overwhelmingly favorable. The problem is frequency, not tone.

The weakest signal is top-three placement. New American Funding recorded a top-three recommendation rate of 4.52% and a rank-one rate of 0.32%, both near the bottom of the category. The company was recommended in the first position in only 2 of 619 qualified observations. Even when it appears, it rarely lands in the shortlist positions that drive buyer consideration.

The strongest platform signal is Perplexity, where New American Funding recorded 26.56% valid recommendation coverage and a net sentiment score of 1.0 across 17 mentions. The weakest platform signal is Copilot, where the company recorded 14.52% coverage with zero top-three placements and an average recommended rank of 7.86.

The clearest gap is competitive displacement. Rocket Mortgage holds 72.54% valid recommendation coverage and a 62.68% top-three rate, meaning the category leader is recommended in the top three in nearly two of every three qualified responses. New American Funding's 4.52% top-three rate represents a 58.2-point gap to the leader on shortlist placement.

What New American Funding Is Winning

Questions This Section Answers

• Where does New American Funding lead the mortgage category in AI recommendation quality?
• Which platform shows the strongest recommendation conversion for New American Funding?

New American Funding holds the highest net sentiment score in the category at 0.8846, ahead of loanDepot at 0.8473 and Veterans United Home Loans at 0.8022. Across 104 total mentions, 92 were classified as positive and none as negative. This indicates that when AI systems do surface the company, the framing quality is strong.

The company also shows a meaningful recommendation pocket on Perplexity. New American Funding recorded 26.56% valid recommendation coverage on that platform, its highest across all six tracked surfaces, with a net sentiment score of 1.0 across 17 mentions. Perplexity represents a narrow but positive signal where the company converts presence into recommendation at a higher rate than its category average.

These wins are real but limited. The company does not lead on presence, recommendation coverage, top-three placement, or rank-one frequency. The sentiment advantage and the Perplexity pocket are the only evidence-backed strengths in the current dataset.

Where New American Funding Has the Clearest AI Visibility Gaps

Questions This Section Answers

• Why does New American Funding's mention presence fail to convert into top-three mortgage recommendations?
• How far behind has New American Funding fallen against loanDepot on valid recommendation coverage?
• Which platforms account for the majority of observations where New American Funding receives no shortlist placement?

The clearest gap is recommendation conversion at the shortlist level. New American Funding recorded a 16.80% raw mention presence rate but converted that into a top-three recommendation only 4.52% of the time. Rocket Mortgage, by comparison, converted a 96.28% presence rate into a 62.68% top-three rate. The gap is not about being seen; it is about being chosen.

The second gap is rank-one displacement. New American Funding appeared as the first recommendation in only 2 of 619 qualified observations, a rank-one rate of 0.32%. loanDepot, which holds a similar mid-table coverage position at 35.38%, recorded a rank-one rate of 2.10%, more than six times higher. Veterans United Home Loans recorded a 16.96% rank-one rate. The company is not competing for the first-position answer.

The third gap is platform inconsistency. On Copilot, New American Funding recorded zero top-three placements and an average recommended rank of 7.86 across 62 observations. On Google AI Overviews, the company recorded a 1.94% top-three rate. On ChatGPT, the top-three rate was 2.50%. These platforms represent the majority of qualified observations, and the company is largely absent from shortlist positions on all three.

The fourth gap is the widening separation from loanDepot. In July 2026, loanDepot trailed New American Funding by 2.1 points on valid recommendation coverage. By October 2026, loanDepot led by 20.5 points. The gap widened in every month of the measurement series, indicating a sustained competitive repositioning rather than a single-month fluctuation.

Biggest Opportunity

Questions This Section Answers

• What drove the 103-recommendation loss in the Brand Recommendation cluster between July and October 2026?
• Which evidence layer should New American Funding build to close the presence gap in AI mortgage recommendations?

The single biggest opportunity is rebuilding presence in the Brand Recommendation cluster, which accounts for all 619 qualified observations in the October 2026 benchmark. New American Funding lost 103 valid recommendations between July 2026 and October 2026, falling from 195 to 92. The decline was driven primarily by reduced presence, not by placement erosion. When the company does appear, its sentiment is the strongest in the category and its placement quality has held relatively steady.

The path from reference to recommendation runs through increasing the frequency with which AI systems surface New American Funding in response to high-intent mortgage lender prompts. The company's own domain does not appear among the top 10 cited domains in the benchmark, while rocketmortgage.com and veteransunited.com do. Building the public evidence layer that AI systems retrieve and synthesize from is the clearest route to closing the presence gap.

Competitive Landscape

Questions This Section Answers

• How does New American Funding's top-three and rank-one rate compare with Rocket Mortgage and the other tracked lenders?
• Which competitors hold the strongest shortlist placement in AI-generated mortgage recommendations?

Rocket Mortgage holds dominant recommendation-stage strength in the mortgage category, with Veterans United Home Loans as the strongest challenger. New American Funding sits fifth of six tracked lenders on top-three rate and rank-one rate, ahead of only Freedom Mortgage on both measures.

Average recommended rank covers rank-eligible recommendations only.

New American Funding's 4.52% top-three rate places it fifth of six, marginally behind Freedom Mortgage at 4.68% and well behind loanDepot at 16.80%. Its 0.32% rank-one rate is tied with Freedom Mortgage for the lowest in the category. The company's 0.8846 sentiment score is the highest in the table, indicating that the framing quality of its mentions is strong even as its recommendation frequency lags.

Prompt Evidence

Questions This Section Answers

• Which high-intent mortgage prompts produced the lowest top-three placement for New American Funding?
• On which platform and prompt did New American Funding record its strongest recommendation coverage?

Google AI Mode / Best Mortgage Lenders & Top Home Loan Providers Prompt: "Which bank loan is best for a home loan?" Result: New American Funding was mentioned in 21.71% of Google AI Mode observations but received a top-three recommendation in only 4.57% and was never ranked first.

Perplexity / Best Mortgage Lenders & Top Home Loan Providers Prompt: "fha loan lenders" Result: New American Funding recorded its strongest platform performance on Perplexity, with 26.56% valid recommendation coverage and a net sentiment score of 1.0 across 17 mentions.

Copilot / Best Mortgage Lenders & Top Home Loan Providers Prompt: "best mortgage rates" Result: New American Funding appeared in 20.97% of Copilot observations but received zero top-three placements and an average recommended rank of 7.86.

ChatGPT / Best Mortgage Lenders & Top Home Loan Providers Prompt: "mortgage lenders" Result: New American Funding recorded 12.50% valid recommendation coverage on ChatGPT with a 2.50% top-three rate and no rank-one placements.

What CiteWorks Studio Would Do Next

Phase 1: AI Visibility Market Discovery Audit Map the specific prompts, surfaces, and evidence sources where New American Funding lost presence between July and October 2026, and identify which competitors absorbed the displaced recommendations.

Phase 2: Recommendation Readiness Plan Prioritize the platform and cluster combinations where the company has the highest conversion potential, starting with Perplexity and Google AI Mode, where presence is strongest.

Phase 3: Owned Answer Layer Buildout Develop lender comparison, eligibility, and product pages structured for AI retrieval, targeting the high-intent prompts where the company currently appears but is not shortlisted.

Phase 4: Citation / Authority Layer Development Build the third-party source footprint that AI systems cite when recommending mortgage lenders, focusing on review sites, comparison platforms, and financial news outlets that dominate the benchmark's top-cited domains.

Phase 5: Monthly AI Visibility and Recommendation Tracking Track valid recommendation coverage, top-three rate, and rank-one rate by platform and cluster to measure whether presence gains convert into shortlist placement.

Why This Matters

Questions This Section Answers

• What is the commercial difference between an AI mention and an actual mortgage lender recommendation?
• Why does New American Funding's top-three rate matter more than its raw presence rate for buyer shortlist formation?

AI-generated recommendations are becoming the first stage of mortgage lender discovery. When a buyer asks an AI system which lender is best for a first-time homebuyer or an FHA loan, the response shapes the shortlist before the buyer visits any lender website. New American Funding's 16.80% presence rate means the company is mentioned in roughly one of every six qualified AI responses, but its 4.52% top-three rate means it rarely makes the shortlist.

The gap between presence and recommendation is the commercially meaningful signal. A mention without a recommendation is a reference, not a lead. New American Funding's strongest asset is its sentiment quality, which indicates that AI systems frame the company positively when they do surface it. The next move is targeted correction of the prompt, page, and citation layers that determine whether that positive framing converts into a shortlist position.

Core Metrics

Sentiment Score

Sentiment Score = (positive mentions × 1 + neutral mentions × 0 + negative mentions × -1) / total mentions

For New American Funding in October 2026: (92 × 1 + 12 × 0 + 0 × -1) / 104 = 0.8846.

This score matters because unclassified mention counts are misleading. A positive recommendation, a neutral reference, a cautionary mention, and a competitor-displaced mention are not equal. Counting all mentions as wins is bad measurement. New American Funding's 104 mentions include 92 positive and 12 neutral classifications, with zero negative. The high sentiment score indicates that AI systems frame the company favorably when they surface it, but the score does not capture whether the company is being recommended or merely referenced.

Share of voice is a diagnostic metric, not a business KPI. New American Funding's 16.80% presence rate tells you how often the company appears, but it does not tell you whether the appearance converts into a recommendation. The sentiment score adds a layer of framing quality, but classified sentiment is required before interpreting AI visibility. A company with high presence and high sentiment but low recommendation coverage has a conversion problem, not a perception problem.

Sentiment by Platform

Methodology

1. This report is a benchmark-based analysis of New American Funding's AI recommendation position in the mortgage category, derived from the October 2026 LLM Authority Index AI Visibility Market Discovery benchmark.
2. The reporting window is October 2026, with comparison data from the July 2026 baseline, August 2026, and September 2026.
3. Six AI platforms were tracked: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, and Google AI Overviews.
4. The October 2026 benchmark produced 619 qualified observations from an initial collection of 800 prompt-surface observations and 560 unique questions.
5. The competitor universe consists of six tracked mortgage lenders: Freedom Mortgage, loanDepot, New American Funding, PennyMac, Rocket Mortgage, and Veterans United Home Loans.
6. One buyer-intent cluster qualified for analysis: Best Mortgage Lenders & Top Home Loan Providers (C01). Two additional clusters, Mortgage Lender Comparisons & Alternatives (C02) and Mortgage Rates, Costs & Pricing (C03), returned no qualified observations.
7. Stage 0 extraction retained the query, AI surface, answer, brand outcome, recommendation placement, sentiment, and citations where exposed.
8. A mention is defined as any qualified observation where New American Funding appears in the AI response, regardless of recommendation status.
9. A valid recommendation is defined as a qualified observation where New American Funding receives a positive recommendation with a rank position of 1 through 10.
10. Brand-level percentages use the 619 qualified observations as the public denominator, not the raw collection volume of 800.
11. Average recommended rank covers rank-eligible recommendations only. New American Funding's average recommended rank of 4.22 is calculated across its 92 valid recommendations.
12. The October 2026 qualified pool of 619 observations is the smallest in the four-month series, which affects how percentage movements translate into absolute counts. New American Funding's 92 valid recommendations are based on this qualified set, so single-digit count movements produce visible percentage changes.

See How AI Is Recommending Your Brand

The public benchmark shows where New American Funding stands in AI-generated mortgage recommendations. A company-level AI visibility audit maps the specific prompts, platforms, competitors, and evidence sources behind those numbers, and identifies the highest-priority actions to close the recommendation gap.