Neighbors Bank's loan officers ask FredBot their guideline questions in Slack. It checks the bank's own overlays first, then the agency rulebook, shows the documents it used, and hands anything uncertain to an underwriter in one click.
In Short
13,000+
Questions answered and logged since rollout
30+
Questions on an average weekday
1click
From any answer to an underwriter
The Question
Neighbors Bank, a mortgage lender in Columbia, Missouri, has four agency rulebooks to know, with its own overlays on top, and the answer depends on the loan program. Those questions were landing on underwriters in Slack, one at a time.
lo-forum
“Does every bedroom need its own heat source?”
One Thread
Sample people and question. FredBot's behaviour is as built.
/019:42 AM · Loan officer
Jordan tags FredBot. A 👀 lands at once, so nobody wonders if it heard.
Jordan Ellis9:42 AM
@FredBot does every bedroom need its own heat source?
👀 1
FredBotAPP9:42 AM
Thinking…
/029:42 AM · Loan officer
The answer depends on the loan program, so FredBot asks.
FredBotAPP9:42 AM
Which loan program is this: USDA, FHA, VA or Conventional? The answer depends on the program and on any Neighbors Bank overlay.
Jordan Ellis9:43 AM
USDA purchase. Appraiser noted a basement bedroom with no heat register.
/039:43 AM · Loan officer
Overlay first, then the agency guideline, with every source listed.
FredBotAPP9:43 AM
I don't see a Neighbors Bank USDA overlay on heat sources in individual rooms. That means we default to the USDA handbook, HB-1-3555, Chapter 12 (Property and Appraisal Requirements).
Relevant Sources
/049:45 AM · Loan officer
Jordan wants an underwriter to confirm, so he clicks Escalate to Human.
Jordan Ellis clicked 🙋 Escalate to Human
FredBotAPP9:45 AM
The previous message has been successfully escalated.
The whole thread goes to the underwriters' private channel
/059:45 AM · Underwriters
Underwriters get one card: who asked, where, and every turn.
FredBotAPP9:45 AM
🚨 ESCALATED MESSAGE 🚨
📢 This message is in a Channel
From @Jordan Ellis in #lo-forum, today at 9:45 AM
/069:47 AM · Underwriters
Sam clicks Claim Message, and his name goes on the card.
Sam Ortiz clicked ✋ Claim Message
FredBotAPP9:45 AM
🚨 ESCALATED MESSAGE 🚨
📢 This message is in a Channel
From @Jordan Ellis in #lo-forum, today at 9:45 AM
✅ Message claimed by @Sam Ortiz
Back in Jordan's thread
/079:51 AM · Loan officer
Sam answers in the thread and adds the gap to FredBot's documents.
FredBotAPP9:47 AM
Your escalation has been claimed by @Sam Ortiz.
Sam Ortiz9:51 AM
Thanks Jordan, I've got this one. I'll look at the appraisal and reply here today. I've also added a note to the Miscellaneous Information doc so FredBot can answer this on its own next time.
Who Uses It
Each side sees only what it needs.
Screens shown with sample data.
Loan officers
Underwriters
Where Neighbors Bank has an overlay, that is the answer. Where it doesn't, FredBot says so and goes to the agency guideline for the loan's program.
Checked first
Neighbors Bank's lending manual and overlay matrices
Then the agency rule
The four agency rulebooks, and two references
The shelf as of October 2026.
Guardrails
Testers tried a spaceship-shaped house and a lunar base. FredBot steers anything off-topic back to a real loan scenario.
Screens shown with sample data.
Getting Better
Every question and answer goes to a shared log, and the underwriters grade it: a good answer, or what it should have said. Each gap is fixed once, in the documents or the instructions, for every loan officer after.
Sample rows. The bank's live log is not shown.
Before rollout, every change to FredBot's instructions ran against the same questions and was graded, one tab per version.
One workflow serves two Slack workspaces: ours, for testing, and the bank's. Every change is tried in ours before loan officers see it.
Built on n8n, OpenAI, Pinecone and Slack, in accounts the bank owns.
The Results
A sourced answer in the loan officer's own thread, usually within seconds.
From 32 in the April 2025 pilot to four or five monthly.
A forced upgrade took it down in October 2025; back the same day.
More systems built around how a business actually runs.
SchedulingA scheduling system that collects provider availability, builds the weekly schedule and chases missing or late submissions, replacing two separate tools.
OperationsAn Airtable system that follows every building a fiber ISP is wiring, with sales activity, Zendesk escalations and Gmail and Calendar sync landing on the right record automatically.
