The Intermediary – January 2026 - Flipbook - Page 69
T E C H N O L O GY
Opinion
safely reserved for human brokers.
Edge cases, exceptions and appeals:
When a file falls outside program
boundaries (such as bankruptcy,
non-standard income or financial
gaps), human judgement must steer
the path.
Strategic oversight, QA and
governance: Humans cra risk
limits, check model biases, audit
AI decisions, and intervene when
necessary.
Business development and
partnerships: Creating alliances,
negotiating lender access, branding,
and high-level growth strategy
remain human domains.
Next generation skills
Transitioning to AI isn’t always an
easy sale, especially with brokers
who have spent decades honing their
approach to the industry. Below are
some of the common challenges of
transitioning to AI in the mortgage
industry:
Cultural resistance: Many brokers
see technology as a threat, not an
enabler. This can result in poor
uptake of new, useful technology
like AI.
Soware compatibility and
integration issues: Certain legacy
systems will struggle to integrate
cleanly with certain AI modules.
Data quality and trust: AI works
only as well as the data it’s fed. This
means poor document quality or
silos may limit performance.
Skills and training gaps among
advisers: Staff must learn to trust,
audit, and oversee AI outputs.
To succeed, brokers must start
modestly. This might mean
automating a few low-risk workflows,
validating performance, training staff
to collaborate with AI, and building
governance scaffolding to work with
the FCA guidelines. Over time, you
can scale from the boom up.
Are you ready?
The 90/10 Rule gives us an interesting
way to view AI in the mortgage
industry. It proposes that in the near
future, the best mortgage brokers
won’t be fully human or fully AI,
but smart hybrids. By 2026, the bulk
of the work – document handling,
scenario simulation and lead scoring –
will be handled by AI. The remaining
human effort will be reserved for
judgement, relationships, negotiation,
and oversight.
Brokers who understand this shi,
adopt early, and work with AI will
vastly outperform those clinging to
manual models. The future of the
mortgage industry is part-AI, and by
2026, the brokers who aren’t part-AI
will struggle to compete. ●
January 2026 | The Intermediary
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