However, gaps remain in AI adoption, with cultural attitudes still ambivalent, domain knowledge in need of improvement, and trust not yet fully established.
Hosted by Jack Izzard (pictured, third from left), he spoke to leaders across technology, lending and regulation.
Colin Payne (pictured, second from right), head of innovation at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), said it was a “critical issue” for it now.
“It’s an inflection point for AI, so we have to work alongside our firms to help them,” he added.
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Moving away from manual processes
Sue Hayes (pictured, far left), CEO of the Nottingham Building Society, said: “Document reading and verification takes a lot of the time in the process. We are in more specialist lending and so what we want underwriters be [able] to [do] is to spend their time making the decision, not checking the paperwork.”
Stuart Cheetham (pictured, second from left) founder and CEO of MQube, said that while AI may be able to speed up administrative duties, “domain knowledge is the real differentiator.”
He added: “People understanding how to genuinely give advice, how to underwrite. This knowledge won’t be replicated anytime soon, but they will be working with AI to actually speed up the process, to reduce the administration part of that process. But we will still be heavily reliant on the human being in the process”.
Limitations of AI in practice
An issue that stood out was the lack of complete trust in AI.
Hayes added that of its members, “60-70% are in the ‘curve’ of trialling and building confidence […] one of the issues is getting people to be confident enough to trust it.”
Jade Timson-Proud (pictured, third from right), senior mortgage and protection adviser at The Mortgage Mum, highlighted how brokers are having to deal with AI’s accessibility to customers and how it affects advisers’ practice.
“We get clients questions all the time. Every time we see someone, they’ve either gone onto ChatGPT, they’ve done Compare the Market, and they’ve done the calculators. But they’re taking all that information and they’re bringing it to us. So we see there’s not a lot of trust in what they’re finding,” she added.
She also said: “Nine times out of 10, it’s not what we’re going to recommend them or advise them”.
The future of AI in lending
While it may be hard to accurately predict what the future of AI would look like, the panel addressed what progress was yet to be made.
Payne said AI was not new, noting: “We know the drill, we know what to do”.
He also said: “We will observe, and we will guide where we can the progression of this technology”.
Robert Thickett (pictured, far right), digital policy manager at the Building Societies Association (BSA), said that as many of its members – from its largest to its smallest – start to adopt AI, “we’re understanding the concerns and governance issues.”
Timson-Proud added that: “I see [AI] streamlining. The biggest issue we’ve got is trust and culture just across the board in the industry.”
She said that as a broker, she is wary of how AI’s mistakes could reflect on the individual.
Payne added: “The agentic movement will continue. We’re seeing evidence of adoption of agents now, which will only progress to autonomous agents.”
