“I look at our own behavior, which is we’re kind of slow walking some of that kind of hiring now because we’re using these tools”: Sprecher
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Jeffrey Sprecher — Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) — was interviewed at the Goldman Sachs 2025 U.S. Financial Services Conference on December 9. The interviewer introduced ICE as a “global network across trading, data, and mortgage services with lots of technological investment in the space,” and said about Sprecher, “You have a long history of building traded markets, really starting with electronification of global energy and expanding them to fixed income data and obviously trying to digitize the mortgage industry.”
The interview swerved across a number of topics, but here two topics that hit the bull’s eye of what we’ve been discussing on WOLF STREET: The issues around making mortgages “portable” and/or “assumable” in the era of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) when lenders don’t keep mortgages on their balance sheet; and the issues around AI at companies like ICE, and AI’s impact on hiring especially for entry-level jobs (transcript via Seeking Alpha). This is Sprecher talking:
On “portable” and/or “assumable” mortgages.
“But I do think this current administration and a lot of lenders are working with us on two kinds of loans:
“One is, can I sell my house and go to a new house and have my loan be portable?
“Or secondly, can I sell my house and keep the mortgage that’s there and have it be assumable?
“Those things are very difficult to do right now because mortgages get sold into capital markets. There are all kinds of rules about who can know the actual owner of the mortgage. It’s in a mortgage-backed security and what happens if there’s a default, and who gets rights, and it’s very complicated. It’s all designed for consumer protection.
“But with a token [on the blockchain], you could theoretically keep track of everything without necessarily giving up identity. And might allow for these more innovative kinds of loans.
“Those kinds of loans [portable and assumable mortgages] exist in other countries where they don’t have mortgage-backed securities, where the loan stays on the balance sheet of the lender.
“We’re trying to figure out with the industry, can we keep the MBS market, which is a very robust market, but maybe find ways of facilitating some of this other activity.”
On ICE’s use of AI and its impact on hiring at ICE.
Sprecher was asked to discuss how ICE is using AI internally to improve operational efficiencies.
“What we found is… where there is a language-oriented task, the AI model can help streamline that half. So language being code writing, so all of our people now have copilots…
“I think if you mark the market today, I would tell you our good people are better and more efficient. And that we haven’t necessarily eliminated any positions or what have you. We have slowed down just naturally … we sort of slowed down these kinds of entry-level jobs. They have been getting automated in many cases, where somebody might have had a junior person doing something.
“And so I have a lot of friends that have children that are graduated from college – good colleges with good degrees – that are having problems and their friends are having problems entering the workplace.
“I kind of see that because I look at our own behavior, which is we’re kind of slow walking some of that kind of hiring now because we’re using these tools.
“So I think for your model, Alex, it kind of slows the growth of expenses as opposed to being some revolutionized thing. But that’s today. I mean, as we know, these models get better every day. And someday, they may be — you may be interviewing one up here.”
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Where he talks about the good people still being better and more efficient, and AI replacing the junior people: what happens when those better people eventually retire and there is no pipeline of next gen to replace them? Is AI going to be another slow-moving gutting of a company, like financialization? This would imply as a society we are slow landing into a morass of stupidity. I guess the movie Idiocracy was really a documentary.
“other countries where they don’t have mortgage-backed securities”
Curious about two questions.
1. Who benefits from us having an MBS market?
2. Who pays higher costs because of it?
What most of these other markets do not have are 30-year fixed-rate mortgages that are guaranteed by the government and that can be paid off at any time without penalty.
As if family connections and education weren’t already a critical determinant of success; AI appears set to take it to new levels of labor market bifurcation. Where a smart, middle-class kid today might get an Ivy League scholarship and parlay that into a lucrative position on Wall Street, I can see a future where Daddy says I’ll give you my $100 million account to manage, but only if you hire my kid. AI may allow the very wealthy to pull up the ladder behind them. My hope is that AI can democratize knowledge to the extent that enterprising young folks can create new products at a pace that overwhelms the masters of the old world.
The only thing on the horizon that might help bring down home prices is the end date of the 15 yr mortgages that were set below 3%
People cant afford to give up those “gifted” rates and thus are locked in to where they currently live. This keeps supply off the market and makes real estate even a more illiquid environment.
Curious that the CEO of ICE, an exchange, would seek MORE govt fiddling with markets.