The regulator’s AI endorsement confirms its value in the mortgage sector – Cheetham

The focus was on supporting first-time buyers, later life lending and protecting vulnerable customers, but also importantly (and what is most relevant to the business we do here at MQube) is how to improve the customer journey through artificial intelligence (AI) and technology innovation. The FCA states that it wants to encourage the use of AI and technology to help brokers give consumers “better” and “faster” advice while keeping the “human touch”.

Also, in the statement, the FCA highlights feedback on digitalising the house buying process, stating that benefits include “greater transaction certainty, speed, efficiency, reduced fraud, resilience and reduced costs”. By contrast, the statement notes, the current system is seen as “slow, inefficient, with high failure rates and costs than in other countries” around the world.

AI will assist, not replace, human advice

For us at MQube, it is extremely encouraging and refreshing to see the regulator highlighting this feedback, as it underlines the very foundations on which MQube was built. Frustrated by the outdated sluggish paper heavy legacy mortgage systems was the reason we founded MQube in 2016. We saw a huge opportunity to build an AI-driven mortgage platform that would serve to replace outdated legacy systems, with the end goal being to improve the experience of getting a mortgage for all parties involved, making the process faster, more reliable and less stressful.

However, building a technology-driven mortgage business has not come without challenges. The biggest barrier has been the mortgage ecosystem itself and navigating the rigorous regulatory framework. Convincing stakeholders that automation and AI can both be compliant and beneficial has been no easy task.

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With the FCA’s drive to support technological advancements in this industry, we hope this will unlock new opportunities and lower existing barriers for lenders, brokers and technology providers like ourselves, with the end goal being to future-proof the mortgage industry and improve the customer experience.

It’s great to see the regulator launching initiatives such as the ‘AI Lab’, which supports mortgage firms explore and test AI innovations, but there is still so much more to do. Technology providers like ourselves need to help the regulator and the industry at large demystify all things AI and technology, and this is high on MQube’s priority list for 2026. We need to build AI expertise in this industry, as well make adopting new AI-driven technology simple, straightforward and seamless.

Furthermore, we wholeheartedly agree with the feedback from the FCA in this review around the importance of human touch throughout the mortgage process and would stress that AI is not here to replace human advice, but rather assist and harness it.

The FCA highlights in its paper that “intermediaries could increasingly act as facilitators of AI outputs, helping consumers understand and contextualise AI-generated advice”. It states: “AI is seen as valuable for improving sales processes, eligibility assessment and admin tasks”. This is unequivocally the case and we fully concur with this feedback from the FCA.

AI-driven technology in the mortgage sector serves to remove the heavy lifting from the mortgage process so that brokers have more time to focus on what really matters, which is giving their customers the highest quality advice and supporting them as best as they possibly can through the entire mortgage journey.