Citi made a minority investment in mortgage infrastructure provider Pylon.
In addition, the companies are working together to provide Pylon customers with direct access to Citi’s institutional-grade products and rates by integrating the liquidity offered by Citi’s mortgage trading desk directly into the Pylon platform, the companies said in a Tuesday (Nov. 26) press release.
“Pylon’s next-generation, multi-product platform is built on an intelligent core,” Patrick Brett, head of Citi SPRINT Investments, said in the release. “We’re excited to launch this strategic initiative and deliver the scale of our industry-leading Spread Products business to Pylon.”
Citi invested jointly through its Spread Products Investment Technologies (SPRINT) unit and Citi Ventures, according to the release. It joined Pylon’s existing investors Conversion Capital, Allegis Capital, Peter Thiel, QED and Fifth Wall.
Pylon was founded in 2022 and serves wealth management, homebuilding, servicers, banks and select lenders, per the release. The company’s platform delivers programmatic originations and capital through APIs.
The investment from Citi is a “significant milestone” for the mortgage infrastructure provider, Pylon founder and CEO Trent Hedge said in the release.
“Our connectivity with Citi’s mortgage trading desk delivers the same unobstructed access to Wall Street that was previously only available to the largest market participants,” Hedge said.
Meanwhile, mortgages and other credit are getting harder to come by.
The Credit Access Survey released Nov. 18 by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed that while demand was on par with previous readings, credit applications were rejected at the highest rate since the start of the survey in 2013.
“Reported rejection rates for credit cards, mortgages, auto loans, credit card limit extension applications and mortgage loan refinance applications all rose in 2024,” the New York Fed said in a press release that accompanied the data.
With many younger buyers finding themselves priced out of the housing market, the age of a typical homebuyer has reached an all-time high of 56, according to data from the National Association of Realtors’ 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.