The news: Wealthfront, a roboadvisory wealth tech, announced Wealthfront Home Lending, a mortgage platform for purchase loans and refinancing. It will offer fixed- and adjustable-rate conventional and jumbo loans up to $5 million.

Applications are launching this fall in Colorado, California, and Texas, and the company will expand access in early 2026. Wealthfront previously focused on its core automated investing platform and complementary deposit products.

How it works: The mortgage product is only offered to customers of Wealthfront’s core brokerage and roboadvisory service. From day one, the company aims to prequalify customers, expedite preapproval for applications, and undercut competitors on price..

Why it’s worth watching: Wealthfront offers a variety of account types and investment options. It sources revenue from brokerage and wealth—advisory fees, interest on portfolio lines of credit, interchange, and interest on cash. With the mortgage product, Wealthfront dives much deeper into banking.

The company’s banking play to date has been a high-yield deposit account that complements its investment products, which it markets aggressively as a teaser for prospective customers. Wealthfront’s strategy has been to incentivize cash transfers to its platform, which customers then invest, and keep customers engaged after selling investments.

Our take: Wealthfront is not jumping into all aspects of banking: It should not be exposed to balance sheet risk, because partner banks and mortgage companies will originate the loans. Wealthfront is likely to share in the interest paid on the mortgages it distributes and benefit from customer engagement with its platform.

Wealthfront Home Lending will for now be an incremental revenue source. But it threatens banks’ mortgage business by accelerating growth in digital mortgage companies. Online lenders like Rocket Mortgage, SoFi, Better Mortgage, Zillow Home Loans, Mr. Cooper, and Tomo already compete in the space on customer convenience, digital experience, and mortgage rates. Banks will struggle to catch up.