From Excel hell to AI policy search, new tools are lowering barriers to complex deals. Here's what's changing for brokers tackling specialist lending.
For years, specialist lending has been reserved for a select group of brokers.
SMSF loans, Alt Doc deals, complex commercial scenarios required not just expertise but deep lender relationships, extensive policy knowledge, and the patience to navigate tools that made simple deals feel complicated.
Many brokers wanted to serve these clients but the barriers to entry were simply too high.
Brokers wanting to write specialist deals faced a familiar set of barriers: clunky Excel spreadsheets that took hours to navigate, lender calculators with completely different interfaces requiring separate data entry, and policy documents scattered across PDFs with no way to quickly find the answer you needed.
The friction was so high that many brokers simply referred these deals out rather than battle the tools.
That's changing fast.
Thinktank leads the shift
Thinktank's recent collaboration with Quickli shows where the industry is heading.
After hearing consistent feedback from brokers that their Excel-based calculator wasn’t making it easy, one of Australia's most respected Residential and Commercial mortgage lenders took a different approach.
Instead of rebuilding from scratch, they leveraged the Quickli platform which more than 14,000 brokers already know and trust.
Thinktank's product suite, including Private Residential Stock Loans, GST loans on commercial property, and specialist residential products, is now accessible in the same intuitive format that over half of Australia's mortgage brokers use daily.
Whether you're accessing it through your aggregator portal, Thinktank's website, or their direct broker platform, the experience is instant, familiar, and frustration-free.
Enter client data once, get your serviceability answer immediately, and flow that same data through to Thinktank with a single click when you're ready to proceed.
"We've digitised products that go well beyond standard residential lending and delivered them in the format brokers expect," says Darren Davis, Head of Sales at Quickli.
"This removes what was previously a significant barrier to broker engagement with specialist products."
Quickli's Serviceability-as-a-Service model means lenders can ditch their clunky proprietary calculators and meet brokers in the platform they already use every day.
For you, that means fewer systems to learn, faster workflows, and more confidence tackling specialist deals.
AI makes policy accessible
But calculators are only half the equation.
Even when brokers can run scenarios quickly, they still need to navigate thousands of pages of lender policy documentation to understand eligibility, exceptions, and requirements.
This is where AI is genuinely changing the game.
Jiffi AI, Quickli's AI-powered credit analyst, provides instant answers across policy and product for 50+ lenders.
Instead of spending hours searching through PDFs or waiting for BDM responses, brokers can ask complex policy questions in plain language and get accurate answers in seconds.
"Don't shy away from asking product questions," says Eric Dill, co-founder and co-CEO at Quickli.
"Jiffi is built to answer the kind of questions you'd normally need to track down a lender, a co-worker, or a BDM to answer."
Recent updates have built Quickli's most-loved features directly into Jiffi: postcode lookups for lender-specific policies, up-to-date SLA information across every lender, and state-based funds position calculations with applicable government fees and grants included.
For specialist lending scenarios where policy nuance matters, this access to instant, accurate information is transformative.
Purpose-built tools for specialist scenarios
Beyond calculators and policy search, brokers are increasingly turning to purpose-built tools designed specifically for specialist lending complexity.
Quickli's Alt Doc Tool uses a policy-driven rules engine to automatically surface suitable lenders based on a client's ABN history, documentation type, BAS history, and credit profile.
What was previously manual research across multiple lender policies now happens in seconds, with comparison reports generated instantly.
Data from Quickli's platform shows the impact: Alt Doc product recommendations jumped 124% in March 2026, with the recommendation-to-creation ratio nearly doubling.
Brokers aren't just exploring these tools, they are actively converting these scenarios into client recommendations.
Similarly, SMSF lending activity has surged 56% month-on-month as brokers gain access to tools that deliver accurate maximum capacity across nine lenders with each lender's unique contribution rules handled correctly. The tool has moved from niche to mainstream in broker workflows.
"There are brokers out there who'd write more Alt Doc and SMSF deals if they had the right tools," Dill says. "These aren't mainstream lending scenarios, so brokers need confidence they're getting the requirements right. The right technology takes these deals out of the 'too-hard' basket."
What this means for your business
The barrier to entry for specialist lending is dropping rapidly. Where complex deals once required deep lender relationships, extensive policy knowledge, and tolerance for clunky tools, technology is now leveling the playing field.
Brokers who embrace these tools can confidently expand into higher-value scenarios without proportionally increasing operational complexity. Working smarter, with better infrastructure, not harder.
The distinction between "mainstream" and "specialist" brokers may increasingly blur, replaced by a channel where sophisticated technology enables all brokers to serve clients across a wider spectrum of lending complexity.
For brokers looking to differentiate, grow revenue, and better serve clients who don't fit the standard residential box, the tools are finally catching up to the ambition.
Learn more at: https://app.quickli.com.au/quickli-pro
