Home Equity Loans: AI Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

Bank of America leads the Home Equity Loans benchmark with 69.6% valid recommendation coverage in September 2026, holding the top position it also held at the August 2026 baseline of 66.3%. Navy Federal Credit Union holds second place at 67.8% in September 2026, up from 66.0% in August 2026, a gap of 1.8 percentage points between the top two brands.

TD Bank is the only brand with a significant move this month, falling from 13.6% valid recommendation coverage in August 2026 to 8.8% in September 2026, down 4.8 points, a decline beyond normal month-to-month variation. Its top-three rate fell from 3.9% to 1.2%, and its rank-one rate fell from 0.3% to 0.0%, over the same period. Every other tracked brand moved within the range of normal month-to-month variation, including U.S. Bank (31.1% to 35.7%, up 4.6 points) and Figure (53.0% to 57.5%, up 4.5 points), which recorded the largest raw increases in the category this month.

Across the two-month series, Bank of America and Navy Federal Credit Union have held the top two positions in both August and September 2026.

Current Benchmark at a Glance

Qualified surface breadth counts the canonical AI surface families with at least one qualified observation: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. The benchmark reached the full breadth of six families in both August and September 2026.

For the strategic interpretation of this benchmark, read CiteWorks Studio's analysis of How AI Search Is Recommending Home Equity Loans

Research Scope and Qualification

The public benchmark is narrower than the raw collection universe by design.

Brand-level percentages use the qualified observations as the public denominator, not the raw collection. AI Market Discovery Methodology.

Current Brand Standings

This table is the primary current-month benchmark view, sorted by valid recommendation coverage. Figures are for September 2026.

How to Read the Standings

• Presence rate: share of qualified observations where the brand appears in any form.
• Valid recommendation coverage: share of qualified observations where the brand receives a valid recommendation, the primary benchmark metric.
• Top-three rate: share of qualified observations where the brand appears among the top three recommendations.
• Rank-one rate: share of qualified observations where the brand appears as the very first recommendation.
• Net sentiment: positive minus negative mentions divided by total mentions, on a scale from -1 to 1.

For formulas and denominator rules, see AI Market Discovery Metric Definitions.

Recommendation Coverage Movement

Largest Decline: TD Bank

TD Bank moved from 13.6% valid recommendation coverage in August 2026 to 8.8% in September 2026, down 4.8 points, a decline beyond normal month-to-month variation. The brand recorded 46 valid recommendations in August 2026 and 30 in September 2026. Its top-three rate declined from 3.9% in August 2026 to 1.2% in September 2026, and its rank-one rate moved from 0.3% to 0.0% over the same period.

Category Leader: Bank of America

Bank of America leads the category with 69.6% valid recommendation coverage in September 2026, up from 66.3% in August 2026. The brand also holds the highest presence rate at 92.9%, the highest top-three rate at 50.7%, and the highest rank-one rate at 23.9%.

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Coverage alone does not show how prominently a brand is recommended. Bank of America leads both top-three and rank-one placement, appearing first in 23.9% of qualified observations in September 2026. Navy Federal Credit Union holds near-parity coverage but a much lower rank-one rate.

Similar coverage can hide very different first-position rates.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

All 339 qualified observations in September 2026 fell into the Brand Recommendation class, as did all 338 qualified observations in August 2026.

The current public series measures Brand Recommendation discovery and does not yet contain qualified observations in the Pricing & Value or Multi-Brand Comparison classes.

Historical Measurement Record

This is an evergreen benchmark URL. New measurements are added to the same report.

Evidence and Source Layer

The benchmark is built from prompt-level observations that retain the query, AI/search surface, answer, brand outcome, recommendation placement, sentiment, and, where exposed, citations or attributable evidence sources. Source presence is evidence about the information environment. It is not automatically proof that the source caused the recommendation.

Scope Boundaries

This public benchmark does not measure:

• Market share or sales attribution
• Every possible AI response across all tools and configurations
• Organic-search ranking performance
• Social media mention volume
• Private or sponsored channels (such as closed enterprise AI deployments)
• Causality from a metric movement alone

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Market Discovery Index benchmarks how AI search and assistant surfaces present brands in a given category, based on a defined set of research questions and public prompt-surface observations. The benchmark tracks presence, recommendation coverage, placement, and sentiment as distinct signals. New measurements are added to the same evergreen report so the series builds over time.

• AI Market Discovery Methodology
• AI Market Discovery Metric Definitions
• AI Market Discovery Research Standards
• Modeled AI Authority Value

Get a Company-Level Authority Index

The public industry benchmark shows category-level standings. A company-level Authority Index can go deeper.

Get my free AI Company Index