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Software industry leaders have outlined how AI will change the day-to-day work of brokers.
New artificial intelligence (AI) technology will alter but not diminish the role of brokers, according to executives from two major software businesses.
During a webinar to mark a new partnership between Nasdaq-listed digital infrastructure company Equinix and Melbourne-headquartered software specialist Zetaris, three of the companies’ executives spoke about how AI would benefit brokers, but it is not without its risks.
Through the partnership, Equinix and Zetaris have made agentic AI tech available to brokerages, which they claim can reduce manual workloads, increase accuracy, and improve customer experiences.
Organisations can deploy ‘AI agents’, which include ‘AI Mortgage Brokers’ and ‘AI Bankers’, they said, outlining that the Zetaris platform also supports holographic AI with voice and emotion recognition for a more immersive experience, the companies claim.
‘It’s going to augment the broker’
Answering a question from The Adviser on whether AI will decrease the role of human brokers, Zetaris founder and CEO Vinay Samuel said: “The short answer [is] it’s not going to diminish the role. It’s going to give time back.
“The feedback we get from brokers is that the robotic, painful part of their job they want to go away: document preparation, trying to find the right portfolio of products that are out there, and what’s the right interest rate. They want to do the human piece.
“They want to go and talk to customers and help them move on in their life and build that trust… It’s going to augment the broker.
“It comes back to the same answer, it’s an augmentation and it makes the human more human and better.”
Robert Herjavec, newly appointed executive director at Zetaris, also said that AI would not replace brokers but could support them.
“People have this fear of AI that it’s going to replace people… It’s not going to replace people. It’s going to force companies to accelerate their value curve. Any role that is pedantic and requires constant doing every day can be replaced by AI,” Herjavec said.
Costs and risks slow AI uptake
Recent research commissioned by the Australian Finance Industry Association (AFIA) showed that over the next three years, the finance industry’s adoption of generative AI is set to double, with mortgage applications among the areas set for change.
However, the high costs of AI adoption – particularly when building bespoke intelligence – could pose companies problems, Samuel said.
He said that firms needed to navigate “the cost of AI and the potential for massive cost blowouts and [the] massive waste in economic value”.
Samuel also noted the risks of “heavy, painful migration” for businesses looking to adopt AI.
Despite the potential benefits of using AI for businesses, its uptake in the Australian finance industry over the past two years has been slow, according to AFIA.
Just one-third of respondents had integrated generative AI within their existing business function.
Slow uptake has been due to what AFIA described as the “unique risks” of generative AI, including accuracy, transparency, and privacy.
AI gains ground in broking
Brokers have been fast to adopt the technology, though, with a raft of brokerages and aggregators leaning on AI.
Former MoneyQuest broker Michael Richardson (CEO) and seasoned technology executive Russell Lewis (CTO) recently launched Cynario, a new AI platform to help brokers navigate lender mortgage policies.
Similarly, fintech and asset finance brokerage LoanOptions.ai recently unveiled its new AI-powered tool, HAILO, which aims to make the mortgage application process faster and easier for brokers and clients alike.
Bluestone is also using AI to detect fraud and speed up applications, while non-bank lender N1 Holdings uses an AI assistant to support brokers.
Earlier this year, Tony MacRae, chief commercial officer at lender Bluestone Home Loans, similarly said that AI will supplement brokers by strengthening in areas like data analysis but would not replace them.
[Related: AI ‘supplementing, not replacing’ brokers: Bluestone]
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