ISCOVER
Major brokerage Aussie has said it is heavily investing in artificial intelligence as part of a move to rebuild the business with an “agentic framework”.
Australian brokerage brand Aussie, part of the Lendi Group, is set to launch a range of new artificial intelligence (AI) technology across the group as it focuses on “rebuilding [the] whole business with an agentic structure, agentic framework, and being an AI native business,” according to Sebastian Watkins, chief operating officer at Lendi Group.
Speaking to The Adviser about the brokerage’s plans for this financial year (FY26), Watkins said the company was “effectively redesigning the whole workflow, the whole business, to be AI-first”, spanning the company from internal operations to customer and broker interactions.
While the brokerage has already been testing AI-powered broker assistants to summarise broker and customer interactions and an AI bot to fast-track brokers’ policy-related queries across lender products within the group’s platform, this technology is now moving to agentic AI.
For brokers, this would translate into “unprecedented” support from AI agents (systems designed to autonomously perform tasks and take actions when instructed to do so), Watkins said.
AI agents will be rolled out to assist brokers with a wide array of tasks, from responding to emails and managing administrative duties to crafting marketing content and ad copy.
He said: “Whether that’s helping design a web page, helping write code, helping build product, whatever that may be, you’ll see that there’ll be an AI or an ‘agentification’ of all of those processes right through from start to finish in our business.”
These agents will also provide an “always-on” presence for customers, offering real-time assistance with queries, he said.
One of the developments that Aussie is reportedly testing at the moment is an AI tool (built in-house) that can be used to find lender policy and servicing answers.
The tool – one of several AI-backed tools being rolled out to brokers to answer policy questions and quickly identify niches for servicing (such as The Brokers’ Bible and Cynario) – aims to act as an AI-powered business development manager (BDM) that brokers can converse with in a conversational way to workshop scenarios and find relevant solutions.
Watkins explained: “This is an AI version of a BDM that you can talk to that understands all the lender policies... You could say: ‘I’m looking to take this loan to Macquarie. They’ve got a 45-square-metre apartment in this suburb, and what can you lend against that?’ And the conversation back from the agent will be very conversational.
“Effectively, it’s taking something that you would need to search for – say, lender, policy rates, servicing, etc – and bringing that all into a natural language experience where you can converse either through text or through voice with effectively, an all-knowing BDM for all lenders across all policy and servicing. And it’s all sitting there and in the one experience.”
The CCO said that the new AI technology will be steadily released across the next 12 months, with most coming out before the end of the calendar year.
Asked why the brokerage was moving to become “AI native”, Watkins added that he believed broker clients are becoming more acquainted with mainstream AI solutions (such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot) and will come to expect near-instantaneous responses from their brokers.
“What we will see is that as we become more comfortable with using these tools, and as customers become more and more comfortable in an AI world, there will be less patience for non-AI experiences,” he said.
“So you will get used to a speed of a result on something, you will get used to the access of information in real time and you’ll get used to not having to wait days for a response from a bank.
“As that becomes par for the course, the expectation from our customers, I believe, will be to maintain that standard, that level of quality, and that speed of return of information… That doesn’t mean that you don’t want to have a chat with [your] broker and talk about the direction [you’re] looking to go. But everything that sits below that; the decision making, the fulfilment, the documentation, the research, understanding which house you should be buying, and where and when and why, and the reviewing of the contracts can actually be done by an AI agent.
“Our customers will be getting a better experience through the stack, because they’ll have faster access to information in real time, quicker responses on things, their files will be moving through more quickly. And they’ll be able to self-power a bunch of their experiences they want to because the AI agent knows exactly where their file is up to.”
However, Watkins said that Aussie’s vision for AI integration is not about replacing human brokers or replacing human interactions.
Instead, he emphasised that the aim is to empower brokers by off-loading significant “cognitive load” and the burden of “administrative computation” to an AI agent.
“What the agentic workforce gives us is it gives us an AI motion where, effectively, humans are… not doing the work, we’re just owning and building and managing the systems that sit below that,” Watkins elaborated.
“This release of capacity will allow brokers more time to focus on customer acquisition and building deeper relationships, while customers benefit from faster access to information, quicker responses, and more streamlined processes.
“One of our company values is: Keep Home Loans human.
“But we don’t need to keep the administrators human. I’m pretty sure everyone’s happy to give that work away.”
AI use expected to double in next 3 years
The move to adopt AI in financial services has accelerated this past year and is expected to double over the next three years, according to the Australian Finance Industry Association (AFIA).
In a report commissioned by AFIA and conducted by firms King & Wood Mallesons and Sapere, researchers suggested that AI is expected to bring significant productivity gains to the finance industry and wider economy, particularly in areas like employee productivity and process automation.
Businesses that are investing heavily in generative AI expect to use it to improve customer experience by increasing the speed at which customers receive services and simplifying the customer experience, the research found.
It noted that generative AI could also be used to help eliminate pinch points in mortgage applications, guiding customers through processes and complexities.
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