So, Accenture’s CEO, Julie Sweet, has been on a world tour talking about how AI is going to “change the work, change the workforce, and change the workbench.” It’s a beautiful, slick vision. A future where we’re all “augmented,” seamlessly collaborating with our digital overlords to achieve unprecedented levels of productivity. You can almost hear the soaring orchestral score in the background of her interviews.
Then, on a quiet Tuesday, Accenture announced it was selling off Mortgage Cadence, its end-to-end loan origination software company.
You see the disconnect, right? One day you're preaching the gospel of retraining and upskilling every last worker for the glorious AI revolution. The next, you're quietly handing off a whole company—a company built on the messy, complicated, and deeply human process of mortgage lending—to an entirely different holding group. This isn't about innovation. No, that's not right—this is about marketing innovation. And Mortgage Cadence, with its focus on the decidedly un-sexy world of loan documents and compliance, just didn't fit the new brand.
Talk is Cheap, Divestment is Cheaper
Let’s be real for a second. Read Sweet’s words carefully, from an interview titled Accenture CEO Julie Sweet on AI and Why Humans Are Here to Stay: “You’ll see a talent rotation, because not everyone is going to make the journey when you’re transforming your workforce.”
A “talent rotation.” That’s the kind of bloodless corporate jargon that should send a shiver down your spine. It sounds so clean, so strategic. Like swapping out a tire on a race car. But we’re talking about people. People with mortgages of their own, kids in school, and careers they’ve spent years building. So when the CEO talks about a “talent rotation,” is she talking about the people at Mortgage Cadence? Or are they just… rotated out of the building?
Accenture is telling us they’re all-in on helping clients “rewire how the work gets done.” They even created a whole new division, “LearnVantage,” to handle the massive upskilling required. But what about their own people? It seems a lot easier to talk about reskilling in the abstract than to actually do it for a division that doesn’t scream "cutting-edge AI." It's like a celebrity chef who gives endless interviews about the virtues of locally sourced, organic ingredients while quietly selling off their chain of greasy-spoon diners. The diners made them rich, but they don't look good on Instagram anymore.
The sale of Mortgage Cadence to PartnerOne feels like the punchline to a joke nobody at Accenture wants to tell. They’re dumping a legacy software business so they can focus on the explosive growth of their “advanced AI practice.” That ain't transformation; that's a hand-off. They’re not solving the hard problem of integrating AI into a complex, regulated industry like mortgage lending. They’re just selling the problem to someone else.
The Unspoken Subtext of "Undisclosed Terms"
And offcourse, the terms of the deal were not disclosed. They never are. This little phrase is corporate America’s get-out-of-jail-free card. It allows a company to completely control the narrative. We don’t know if Accenture made a profit, broke even, or took a bath on the sale just to get Mortgage Cadence off its books. My money's on the latter.
Imagine the scene: a sterile conference room, the air thick with the smell of expensive coffee and quiet desperation. The deal is signed. A press release, scrubbed clean of any real numbers or emotion, is drafted. Accenture gets to continue its victory lap, talking about being at the forefront of the AI revolution. Meanwhile, the employees at Mortgage Cadence get a welcome email from their new bosses at PartnerOne, a company that specializes in buying and running enterprise software—the digital equivalent of a landlord who buys apartment buildings. They’re not there to revolutionize; they’re there to manage the asset.
This is the part of the "transformation" story they don’t put in the glossy brochures. For every company "reimagining the enterprise," there are pieces of that enterprise being quietly sold for parts. They talk about trust and responsible AI, but what’s responsible about spinning a narrative of inclusive transformation while your actions suggest you’re just cutting loose the parts of the ship that are weighing you down? They talk about a "human experience at the center of all design," but for the folks at Mortgage Cadence, it just means their human experience is now somebody else's problem...
What does this say to any other non-AI-centric division within Accenture? Or at any other major consultancy, for that matter? Is your division’s value now measured solely by how well it fits into a keynote presentation about generative AI?
So, What's the Real Play Here?
Look, I get it. Business is business. Companies shed assets that no longer fit their strategic vision. But let's not pretend this is some enlightened, visionary move toward an AI-powered utopia for all. This is just good old-fashioned corporate strategy, wrapped in the trendiest buzzwords of the day. Accenture isn't a charity; it's a publicly-traded consulting behemoth, and its primary job is to make its AI story look as clean and compelling as possible to investors. A messy, complicated mortgage software company just muddies the waters. They didn't "transform" that workforce. They sold it. And that’s a story you won’t hear from the main stage at Davos.
