The Intermediary – December 2025 - Flipbook - Page 67
T E C H N O L O GY
Opinion
frankly, no AI is beer at supporting
brokers than our human business
development managers (BDMs), or
beer at understanding complex
cases than our broker partners. At
least not yet.
Instead, these updates are designed
to make those points of friction in the
process as smooth as possible.
New tech, old problems
To be clear, I am delighted to see more
focus from other lenders in this area.
Even the high street is beginning to
catch up, or at least they’re thinking
about it – well, they’re definitely
talking about it, anyway.
But I worry that for all this
investment in new tech, we’ll wind up
with the same problem.
The old airline-carcass application
systems cost brokers time and
frustration. It created stress for
customers. And as a second order, it
cost the lender money every time it
broke, or every time a broker went
elsewhere because they couldn’t stand
the clunky experience.
My view is simple: unless a lender
has already eliminated all of the
friction from their application and
We are caught up in
the excitement of shiny
new technology, especially
artificial intelligence (AI),
and losing sight of what
really matters: making
life easier for brokers
and customers”
servicing flows, that flashy new AI
pilot will, equally, just cost time,
money and frustration.
I understand that it can be tempting
to chase aer the next big thing –
especially given that AI does seem
set to revolutionise how we work. It
is still important to stay abreast of
these developments as they happen,
and to know how to implement an
AI strategy if and when the right
opportunity arises. But in order to
make good use of that flashy tech, you
have to be building on top of already
strong foundations.
Based on my time on the high
street, and from what I still hear from
industry experts today, many lenders
are a long way from perfecting the
systems they have.
For the record, Gen H isn’t
perfect. We have chased the flashier
tech before.
For a moment, we had an artificial
intelligence packaging agent that
enthusiastically filed documents into
the wrong buckets. And quickly, the
cost, measured in time, money and
frustration, added up. We learned
from that.
As a fintech lender, you might think
it’s in our nature to prioritise our tech
above all – but it’s not so simple.
Our tech enables us to help people
and set new standards for how
this industry can operate, but our
customer and broker experience is still
our North Star.
I hope other lenders keep this
as their guiding principle as they
implement their own increasingly
ambitious plans over the next
few years. Let’s build, but let’s do
it right. ●
