Islay Robinson (pictured), CEO at the mortgage brokerage, said that advisers who had a tendency to rely on sourcing systems and only recommend ‘vanilla’ lenders to clients were the most vulnerable to technological changes in the advice process.
Robo-advice has already made its mark in the investment sector, with platform Nutmeg offering a fully automated advice model to customers.
The last 12 months has also seen the launch of the first two online mortgage brokers, Habito and Trussle, while many lenders have announced and rolled out plans to introduce advice via video link and ‘self-service’ stations in branches to drum up direct business.
Robinson said: “A lot of mortgage broking is very much a binary [mathematical] service and robo-advice will essentially commoditise the market – so the brokers it will threaten is those that don’t add value to their service.
“Automated advice is likely to infiltrate the most vanilla of broking initially, so by embracing specialist lending and building on customer relationships and retention brokers will add more value to the advice process.
“I get frustrated with those brokers that are just tucking clients in with lenders like Woolwich [Barclays] when other options could be explored,” he added.
