Brokers that don't use artificial intelligence (AI) will eventually be replaced by brokers that do, according to Matt Lowndes, director of innovation at the Mortgage Advice Bureau (MAB).
Speaking at AI session mortgage strategy Speaking at the MIT Live event in London, Lowndes predicted that AI will become increasingly useful for brokers and that customers are likely to expect it from their advisors.
“I believe that brokers that don’t use AI will be replaced by brokers that use AI,” he said.
AI is not here to replace mortgage advisors. Here to accelerate the way we work
Lowndes added that one-third of adults already use some form of AI to manage their weekly finances.
“That change is happening,” he said. “It's here, it's real.”
However, Lowndes said MAB brokers are seeing real benefits from using AI to complement their operations. For example, accuracy on broker documentation was around 80% without AI, but rose to 99% with technology.
Lowndes added that AI also helped speed up document checks. He added that tasks that would take a human 45 to 60 minutes, such as checking a customer's bank account details, can be completed in just 60 seconds using AI.
“Humans are still in the loop,” he said. “AI is not just a bolt-on, and that's very important. But it's also very important that humans still sit firmly at the center of it.”
If you want to feed customer information into AI, you need to make sure you have the right systems in place with the right contracts to do it.
Similarly, by using AI, MAB improved incident handling by 65% and increased complaint resolution by 164%.
The broker's analytics software shows that 90% of MAB customers upload mortgage documents from their mobile phones, Lowndes continued. The same software sees customers sending documents to MAB day and night.
As part of this response, the broker launched an AI chatbot called Morty. This chatbot can answer customer questions at any time, even when the human advisor is asleep.
“He’s very good at answering questions,” Lowndes said.
Speaking at the same event, Connect Mortgage CEO Liz Sims said there are many ways this technology can be used to help the mortgage market, including building websites and software, editing photos and translating audio into another language.
Many AIs can improve productivity, but they don't actually bring about meaningful change.
“AI is not here to replace mortgage advisors,” she says. “We’re here to accelerate the way we work.”
Sims said Connect will launch Mortgage Lab i this year to provide brokers with advice and guidance on how to best leverage AI for their business.
The current version of MortgageLab.ai will be expanded in the new year, Sims added.
Jamie Lawless, co-founder of Lendwell, said that while there is a general fear that AI will replace the role of mortgage brokers, this need not be the case.
“AI will make us more human, not less human,” he says. “A lot of AI brings productivity gains, but not real, meaningful change.”
Lawless identified “three big problems” for AI in the mortgage market that must be solved. AI does not understand lender-specific context. The reason is not explained. Additionally, it is not integrated into the advisor's workflow.
Our chatbot is very good at answering questions
“Using AI to transform your business requires AI that understands context,” Lawless continued. “To be effective, AI needs to address this.”
He was confident about the future role of brokers.
“I think our industry will need more human advisors, not fewer. AI can take away jobs that never needed to be human in the first place. The better the AI, the more human the advisors can become.”
In the Q&A section of the discussion, the panel further discussed the limitations of AI in the mortgage industry and issues to be aware of.
Lowndes said MAB intentionally placed limits on the company's use of AI to curb the technology's frequent errors and “hallucinations.”
AI models are known to generate responses to questions that sound solid and plausible, but are actually false and sometimes appear fabricated.
AI is more than just a bolt-on. But what really matters is that humans are still at the center of it all.
“We know it's a hoax,” Lowndes added. “We're intentionally small. We have to be careful about this.”
Sims added: “If you think of AI as an employee, even if the AI does things more correctly than most human employees, you will want to check what the AI employee did.
“If you want to feed customer information into AI, you need to use the right systems with the right contracts to do so.”
