New American Funding AI Visibility Market Strategy Report - VA Loans Lenders

Answer Capsule

New American Funding holds a visible but under-recommended position in the VA Loans Lenders category, according to the October 2026 LLM Authority Index benchmark. The brand appeared in 16.34% of qualified AI observations but converted only 14.52% into valid recommendations. Its clearest win is framing quality, with the highest net sentiment score in the tracked set at 0.9167. Its clearest weakness is recommendation depth, with a 5.30% top-three rate and a 0.45% rank-one rate. The clearest opportunity sits in converting that positive framing into shortlist placement inside the Brand Recommendation cluster.

Who This Report Is For

This report is written for New American Funding marketing, brand, and growth leadership, and for category analysts tracking how VA loan lenders are discovered and recommended inside AI assistants.

Report Card

Executive Summary

New American Funding is present in AI answers but is not converting that presence into recommendation power. The October 2026 LLM Authority Index benchmark recorded the brand in 108 of 661 qualified observations, a raw mention presence rate of 16.34%, while valid recommendation coverage reached only 14.52%. That 1.82-point gap between being mentioned and being recommended is small in absolute terms, but it sits on top of a much larger structural problem: the brand is named in roughly one of every six answers and shortlisted in roughly one of every seven.

The framing around those mentions is the strongest in the category. New American Funding recorded 99 positive mentions, 9 neutral mentions, and zero negative mentions, producing a net sentiment score of 0.9167. No other tracked lender scored higher. The brand is being described well. It is simply not being placed.

Recommendation depth is where the gap becomes commercially visible. The brand reached the top three in 5.30% of observations and placed first in 0.45% of observations. Rocket Mortgage, by comparison, reached the top three in 66.57% and placed first in 39.03%. Navy Federal Credit Union reached the top three in 40.70%. Veterans United Home Loans reached the top three in 36.61%. New American Funding is not competing in the same placement tier as the category's recommendation leaders.

The strongest cluster signal comes from the single qualified cluster, Best Mortgage Lenders, Discovery and Evaluation, where the brand recorded a 5.30% top-three rate and a 4.16 average recommended rank. The weakest signal is rank-one placement, where the brand recorded only 3 first-position recommendations across the full qualified set.

Platform behavior is uneven. Google AI Overviews produced the largest single-platform contribution, with a 29.75% valid recommendation coverage rate and a 20.25% top-three rate. Perplexity produced a 24.62% coverage rate. ChatGPT produced a 9.20% coverage rate with zero rank-one placements. Copilot produced a 17.11% coverage rate but only a 1.32% top-three rate, meaning the brand is mentioned there far more often than it is shortlisted.

The clearest platform gap is rank-one placement across every surface. New American Funding recorded zero first-position recommendations on ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, and only 3 across the entire qualified set. The brand is being included in consideration sets without being chosen at the top of them.

What New American Funding Is Winning

Questions This Section Answers

• What does New American Funding's 0.9167 net sentiment score and zero negative mentions say about its framing quality?
• Which platform produces the strongest recommendation signal for New American Funding?

The strongest evidence-backed win is framing quality. New American Funding recorded the highest net sentiment score in the tracked set at 0.9167, ahead of loanDepot at 0.8875, Rocket Mortgage at 0.8597, and Navy Federal Credit Union at 0.8589. The brand is being described positively in nearly every answer where it appears.

The second win is the absence of negative framing. Across 108 mentions, the benchmark recorded zero negative mentions. That is a clean public evidence position and it means the brand is not fighting a reputation problem inside AI answers.

The third win is a narrow but real recommendation pocket on Google AI Overviews. The brand recorded a 29.75% valid recommendation coverage rate and a 20.25% top-three rate on that surface, both well above its category-wide averages. Google AI Overviews is the single strongest platform signal in the dataset for this brand.

These are real wins, but they are framing and surface-level wins. They do not yet translate into category-level recommendation power.

Where New American Funding Has the Clearest AI Visibility Gaps

Questions This Section Answers

• Why is New American Funding being left off the top of the shortlist despite strong framing quality?
• How has the recommendation gap between New American Funding and Rocket Mortgage widened from the August 2026 baseline?

The clearest gap is recommendation conversion at the top of the shortlist. New American Funding reached the top three in 5.30% of qualified observations and placed first in 0.45%. Rocket Mortgage reached the top three in 66.57% and placed first in 39.03%. Navy Federal Credit Union reached the top three in 40.70% and placed first in 9.83%. Veterans United Home Loans reached the top three in 36.61% and placed first in 18.76%. The brand is not being displaced by a single competitor. It is being displaced by the entire upper tier of the category.

The second gap is the widening distance from the category leader. The benchmark recorded the gap between New American Funding and Rocket Mortgage widening from 48.8 points at the August 2026 baseline to 63.9 points in October 2026, widening every month of the series. The brand's coverage fell from 18.5% at baseline to 14.5% in October 2026, a 4.0-point decline, while the leader gained 11.1 points over the same window.

The third gap is rank-one absence on four of six tracked platforms. New American Funding recorded zero first-position recommendations on ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. The brand is being included in answers without being selected as the primary option.

The fourth gap is the Copilot mention-to-recommendation mismatch. On Copilot, the brand recorded a 17.11% valid recommendation coverage rate but only a 1.32% top-three rate. That pattern suggests the brand is being named as context or as a listed option rather than as a recommended choice.

Biggest Opportunity

Questions This Section Answers

• How can New American Funding convert its category-leading positive framing into top-three placement in the Brand Recommendation cluster?
• Which citation sources drive shortlist formation, and why does New American Funding's own domain not appearing in the top 10 cited sources matter?

The single biggest opportunity is converting New American Funding's category-leading positive framing into top-three placement inside the Brand Recommendation cluster. The brand already has the hardest asset to build, which is a clean, positive public evidence position with zero negative mentions and the highest net sentiment score in the tracked set. What it does not have is the citation and source architecture that pushes a brand from being named to being shortlisted.

The benchmark's evidence layer points to where that conversion happens. Review and comparison domains lead the citation set, with bankrate.com, nerdwallet.com, and money.com together accounting for 18.7% of the 6,074 citations observed. Financial news outlets including cnbc.com, finance.yahoo.com, wsj.com, and forbes.com follow. Two tracked brands' own domains appear in the top 10 cited sources: navyfederal.org at rank 7 with 163 citations and veteransunited.com at rank 9 with 150 citations. New American Funding's own domain does not appear in the top 10.

That is the opportunity in plain terms. The brand is being described well by sources it does not control and is not yet present in the source layer that AI systems appear to retrieve most heavily when forming shortlists. Building owned and third-party citation presence in the comparison and review layer is the most direct path from positive mention to top-three recommendation.

Competitive Landscape

Questions This Section Answers

• Where does New American Funding rank against Rocket Mortgage, Navy Federal, and Veterans United on top-three and rank-one placement?
• What does New American Funding's 4.16 average recommended rank say about where it typically appears in the shortlist?

Rocket Mortgage holds dominant recommendation-stage strength in the VA Loans Lenders category, with Navy Federal Credit Union and Veterans United Home Loans forming a clear second tier. New American Funding sits in the middle of the tracked set, ahead of Freedom Mortgage, Fairway Independent Mortgage, Movement Mortgage, and Rate on recommendation coverage, but well behind the three leaders on placement depth.

Average recommended rank covers rank-eligible recommendations only.

New American Funding ranks sixth of ten on top-three rate and sixth on rank-one rate, while ranking first on sentiment. The table shows a brand with strong framing and weak placement. Its 4.16 average recommended rank is the second weakest in the tracked set, behind only Fairway Independent Mortgage at 4.91, which means that when the brand does receive rank credit, it typically appears near the bottom of the shortlist rather than near the top.

Prompt Evidence

Questions This Section Answers

• How does New American Funding's recommendation coverage differ across ChatGPT, Copilot, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity on high-intent lender prompts?
• Why does the Copilot mention-to-placement mismatch suggest the brand is listed rather than recommended?

ChatGPT / Brand Recommendation Prompt: "Who is the best mortgage lender right now?" Result: New American Funding recorded a 9.20% valid recommendation coverage rate on ChatGPT with zero rank-one placements, while Rocket Mortgage reached the top three in 70.11% of ChatGPT observations.

Copilot / Brand Recommendation Prompt: "Who is the best lender for mortgages?" Result: New American Funding appeared in 25.00% of Copilot observations but converted only 1.32% into top-three recommendations, a mention-to-placement mismatch that suggests the brand is being listed rather than recommended.

Google AI Overviews / Brand Recommendation Prompt: "Who offers the lowest mortgage rates?" Result: New American Funding recorded its strongest surface result here, with a 29.75% valid recommendation coverage rate and a 20.25% top-three rate, though still with zero rank-one placements.

Perplexity / Brand Recommendation Prompt: "What are the top 5 mortgage lenders in the US?" Result: New American Funding recorded a 24.62% valid recommendation coverage rate and a 10.77% top-three rate, with zero first-position recommendations.

What CiteWorks Studio Would Do Next

Phase 1: AI Visibility Market Discovery Audit. Map the exact prompts, surfaces, and competitor placements where New American Funding is mentioned but not shortlisted, starting with the Copilot mention-to-placement mismatch and the four-platform rank-one absence.

Phase 2: Recommendation Readiness Plan. Prioritize the Brand Recommendation cluster and the comparison and review source layer that appears to drive shortlist formation, since that is where the brand's positive framing is not yet converting.

Phase 3: Owned Answer Layer Buildout. Strengthen New American Funding's own pages on the specific lender comparison, eligibility, and lender-selection questions where the brand is currently named but not chosen.

Phase 4: Citation and Authority Layer Development. Build presence in the review, comparison, and financial news domains that dominate the observed citation set, since the brand's own domain does not currently appear among the top cited sources.

Phase 5: Monthly AI Visibility and Recommendation Tracking. Track top-three rate, rank-one rate, and average recommended rank month over month to confirm whether positive framing is converting into placement.

Why This Matters

AI presence alone is not enough. New American Funding already has the strongest framing in the VA Loans Lenders category and zero negative mentions, and it is still being left off the shortlist in roughly 85% of qualified observations. A buyer asking an AI assistant for the best mortgage lender is not shown a list of every brand mentioned. They are shown a shortlist, and the brand that appears first or in the top three captures the consideration that follows.

The next move is not more visibility. It is targeted correction of the prompt, page, and citation layers that determine whether a positively framed mention becomes a recommended option. New American Funding's framing is already an asset. The work now is making that asset count at the decision moment.

Core Metrics

Sentiment Score

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

For New American Funding in October 2026, that is (99 × 1 + 9 × 0 + 0 × -1) / 108, which produces a score of 0.9167.

This matters because unclassified mention counts are misleading. A brand that appears in 108 answers sounds visible, but that number says nothing about whether the brand was recommended, listed as context, or mentioned as a caution. Share of voice is a diagnostic metric, not a business KPI. A positive recommendation, a neutral reference, a cautionary mention, and a competitor-displaced mention are not equal, and counting all mentions as wins is bad measurement.

New American Funding's score of 0.9167 tells a specific story. The brand is being described positively in nearly every answer where it appears, and it is never described negatively. That is a genuine strength. But sentiment is framing quality, not customer sentiment, and it is not the same as recommendation power. A brand can be framed positively and still be left off the shortlist, which is exactly what the placement metrics show here. Classified sentiment is required before interpreting AI visibility, and it is only the first step. Placement and rank are what determine whether framing converts into consideration.

Sentiment by Platform

Methodology

1. This report is a benchmark-based AI Visibility Company Market Strategy Report for New American Funding in the VA Loans Lenders category. It is not a client implementation case study and does not represent a CiteWorks Studio engagement result.
2. The reporting month is October 2026. The benchmark series covers August 2026, September 2026, and October 2026.
3. Six AI and search surface families were tracked: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode.
4. The October 2026 measurement analyzed 661 qualified observations drawn from a raw collection universe of 800 prompt-surface observations covering 537 unique questions.
5. The competitor universe contains 10 tracked brands: Rocket Mortgage, Navy Federal Credit Union, Veterans United Home Loans, loanDepot, CrossCountry Mortgage, New American Funding, Freedom Mortgage, Fairway Independent Mortgage, Movement Mortgage, and Rate.
6. One public high-intent cluster carried qualified data in this measurement period: Best Mortgage Lenders, Discovery and Evaluation, classified under the Brand Recommendation buyer-intent class. The Pricing and Value and Multi-Brand Comparison classes recorded zero qualified observations.
7. Stage 0 extraction supplied the prompt-level observations that retain the query, the AI surface, the answer, the brand outcome, recommendation placement, sentiment, and citations where exposed.
8. A mention is counted when a tracked brand appears in a qualified AI response, regardless of recommendation status.
9. A valid recommendation is counted only when the dataset explicitly marks the brand as a recommended option within a shortlist. Neutral, cautionary, comparison-anchor, and listed-only mentions are not counted as valid recommendations.
10. Top-three rate and rank-one rate are calculated within the qualified observation set of 661. Average recommended rank covers rank-eligible recommendations only.
11. Source presence in the citation layer is evidence about the information environment. It is not treated as proof that a source caused a recommendation.
12. Month-over-month movement identifies changes worth investigating. It does not by itself establish the cause of those changes. Small counts apply at the lower end of this category, where a handful of observations can shift a percentage noticeably.

See How AI Is Recommending Your Brand

The public benchmark shows where New American Funding stands in AI recommendations across the VA Loans Lenders category. A company-level AI visibility audit maps the specific prompts, surfaces, competitors, and source pages that determine whether a positively framed mention becomes a shortlisted recommendation, and it identifies which citation and comparison sources are shaping those answers.