rahulNovember 15, 20266 Mins read0
Pavan Agarwal is the CEO of Sun West Mortgage Company, Inc. (NMLS 3277), the founder of Celligence LLC, and the creator of AngelAi®, an artificial intelligence platform for mortgage lending. Before he held any of those titles, he was the son of Hari Agarwal, who founded Sun West in 1980.
Hari Agarwal’s influence shows up in specific details, including handwritten loan ledgers, a view of every transaction built on four elements, and one question about each borrower. It also shows up in the jobs Pavan Agarwal did by hand before he ever wrote software to do them.
/filters:format(webp)/elle-india/media/media_files/2026/10/21/image2-2026-10-21-11-15-02.png)
According to the company, Hari Agarwal was a chemical engineer, and he treated income, credit, assets, and collateral as the basic elements of every transaction. The company also says he kept meticulous handwritten loan ledgers.
He came to lending through real estate, as Pavan Agarwal described in a February 2023 interview on Real Estate 101, a show from The Investor’s Podcast Network. He told host Patrick Donley that his father bought foreclosed homes through a government housing program.
Before setting a price, his father talked with neighbors and knocked on doors to learn about each area, Agarwal said. In the same interview, he said his father started Sun West around 1980 alongside a real estate brokerage, when high interest rates made home purchases difficult.
He said his father wanted to control the customer experience from the first meeting to closing, and that he focused on lending as the mortgage business grew. National Mortgage Professional reported in a December 2022 profile that both of Agarwal’s parents worked in real estate.
At the center of Hari Agarwal’s approach was a single question about the borrower, which his son has repeated as his father’s advice. “Ask yourself if you would lend them the money and, if you would, how would you want to be treated as a customer?”
The first part tests whether to make the loan at all, while the second sets a standard for how the lender treats the person once the answer is yes. National Mortgage Professional reported the same advice in its 2022 profile of his son.
Hari Agarwal applied a similar standard to his advice, and according to the company, he never held back knowledge from a family, even when candor cost him the sale.
Pavan Agarwal has credited that foundation in his own words, including when HousingWire named him a Vanguard in 2023 and published his comments about his father. “We have built on his foundation using people-powered technology to allow more customers to find their true home within,” he said.
Pavan Agarwal grew up inside his father’s work, and he said on Real Estate 101 that he joined property visits as a small child to watch his father judge values. He also attended government auctions of foreclosed homes with him, and National Mortgage Professional reported that he often played at the first Sun West office after school.
The chores came early, and according to the company, his first jobs for the family business included mowing lawns, painting walls, cleaning bathrooms, and knocking on doors. National Mortgage Professional reported that his father encouraged him to try originating mortgages while he was still a young teenager.
His duties widened as he grew older, and he told Real Estate 101 that he worked in the business through high school and college, handling accounting, loan servicing, and collections. National Mortgage Professional reported that his roles also included wholesale representative, brand representative, and loan originator.
He had another career in mind for a time, and Agarwal said on the podcast that he considered medical school and that his father never told him no. In the end, he said, he chose the family business himself, and he has spent his working life inside the company his father started.
The manual work gave him a reference point for the software he would later build. “I know what the right answer is supposed to look like because I used to produce it by hand,” he has said.
Hari Agarwal broke every transaction into income, credit, assets, and collateral, and his son carried that habit into software. According to the company, Pavan Agarwal wrote his first loan underwriting program in 1983 and his first AI program in 1985.
He later came to see exclusion in lending in similar terms, as a question of the data behind each loan. “I saw it as a data problem,” he has said, and the company says Sun West converted its mortgage data into a form computers could read during the 1990s.
His father had looked at the same technology earlier, and National Mortgage Professional reported that Hari Agarwal considered artificial intelligence in the 1980s but found it too daunting. The profile reported that his father lacked the technical knowledge to carry out his plans, so his son took over.
Around 2012, Pavan Agarwal committed the company to a new AI design, according to the company, and he has described how demanding that kind of work can be. “Real engineering is hard, specifically when you are trying to make something look simple,” he has said.
/filters:format(webp)/elle-india/media/media_files/2026/10/21/image1-2026-10-21-11-25-00.png)
Hari Agarwal asked his son to take over Sun West in 2008, during the financial crisis, National Mortgage Professional reported, and Pavan Agarwal has led the company since that year. On Real Estate 101, he said his father told him the company was his to handle.
Hari Agarwal passed away at the end of 2021, and the company says carrying his philosophy forward became the work of the years that followed. Agarwal told National Mortgage Professional that he tries to lead as his father did.
The family titles remain distinct, because Hari Agarwal founded Sun West, while his son founded Celligence LLC and created AngelAi. Pavan Agarwal is also the CEO of Angel Twin™, LLC, according to the company.
His stated mission addresses the second half of his father’s question: how borrowers are treated. The company describes that mission as fair and unbiased access to financial security. Agarwal wrote on the subject in a May 2024 Fast Company article titled “How AI creates fair lending.”
The handwritten ledgers Hari Agarwal kept date to Sun West’s earliest years, and the four elements he used to read a transaction predated his son’s software. The guiding question is the part of his method that has outlasted the paper era.
Pavan Agarwal mowed lawns, originated loans, and wrote programs inside the company Hari Agarwal built, and more than four decades later he leads that company as its CEO. He said on Real Estate 101 that his father taught him everything about business and real estate.
Disclaimers:
AngelAi and Fast Company are registered trademarks of Celligence LLC and Mansueto Ventures LLC, respectively.
Sun West Mortgage Company, Inc. and Celligence LLC are not affiliated with any third parties. The names are owned by the respective third parties.
AngelAi has been developed by Celligence LLC, one of the fastest growing fin-tech and AI companies. Celligence has engineered a novel AI that is evolving and self-generating neural-cells which come together to solve complex problems. The Celligence AI is deterministic, not merely generative, and it delivers 100% accurate and trustworthy responses, as is required for financial transactions.
At Celligence, a team of brilliant engineers are expanding the boundaries of the financial services industry through innovations in mobile applications, customer acquisition, retention algorithms, and AI-based process automation continuously filing new patents supporting our technology.
AngelAi has a licensing agreement with Sun West Mortgage Company, Inc. NMLS 3277 to deliver superior quality financial services. Mortgage and other financial services are provided by Sun West Mortgage Company, Inc. NMLS 3277. Celligence LLC is an affiliate of Sun West Mortgage Company, Inc.
At Sun West we dedicate ourselves to offering an amazing experience to our customers. To accomplish this, we empower our loan officers so that they can find great rates and provide attractive and appropriate loan options for each customer – at amazing speed. Our focus on technology has given us an edge in the mortgage industry to offer exceptional turn times so the customers can get into the home of their dreams sooner!
We are committed to our core values of people, experience, technology, and product. Sun West was founded in 1980 with the perspective of “customers first” and the desire to make the mortgage process easy and stress-free for prospective and refinancing homeowners. Since then, Sun West has developed a multi-billion-dollar loan portfolio and is licensed in 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. Our 46 years of experience have been passed down to everyone here at Sun West through excellent leadership and capabilities.
For licensing information, go to: www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org. Visit www.swmc.com/disclaimer for the full list of license information. Please refer to www.swmc.com/TXdis to view Texas Complaint Notice and Servicing Disclosure. In all jurisdictions, the principal (main) licensed location of Sun West Mortgage Company, Inc. is 18303 Gridley Rd, Cerritos, CA 90703, Phone: (800) 453-7884.
Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident
