Mortgage Advice Bureau (MAB) has announced it is at the “early stages” of two artificial intelligence (AI) projects, as the firm said it needed to be at the “forefront” of this technology.
Speaking at the MAB conference on Friday, Lucian Morris, group chief information officer, said the projects would involve AI agents that would talk to customers, understand their needs, support them in assessing their options and provide a triage process to either refer them to an adviser with the information gathered or maintain them in a “nurture” process.
Morris said: “AI is coming whether we like it or not – which it is – and MAB is going to have to be [at] the forefront of that adoption if we are to control it within the mortgage industry.
“We believe that it could make your lives much more efficient and support you in making the customer’s experience with MAB second to none.”
How MAB will use AI
Morris said AI has an “enormous amount to offer”, and if the group could harness it correctly, “the results could be game-changing for all of us”.
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He said it could assist with compliance by spotting issues and helping brokers to avoid further problems.
Morris said the group’s internal software Platform had gone through some enhancements around this, which “in some cases… had reduced the failure rate to zero”.
He said MAB was looking at solving other issues and was rethinking how it would check compliance. He said there would always be a check on files, but this might be done differently.
Morris added: “For example, what if Platform could tell you your data wasn’t complete for the kind of mortgage you wanted to get for your client?
“What if it could tell you that you hadn’t got copies of the documents you needed, or that certain documents needed replacing because they were out of date? And potentially even ask the customer for new ones?
“What if the system could nudge you to remember to ask key questions or spot an omission in your suitability letter?”
He said MAB wanted Platform to be what it referred to as a “guardian angel”, meaning it would be present throughout a case, “working with you to ensure that the case is compliant through submission”.
Morris said the group’s CEO Peter Brodnicki had also thought a lot about improving how MAB managed and nurtured leads.
He added: “The nurture journey aims to maintain contact with customers who are not ready for advice and support them until they are. However, we believe we can do a lot more than this.
“AI provides us with the opportunity to have unique conversations with our customers from the very first moment they contact us.”
Supporting advisers and clients throughout the advice journey
He said AI worked best with a rich dataset, so it was important for MAB’s advisers to engage with Platform and update information regularly.
Morris said the “guardian angel” would go further in assisting the customer and broker throughout the advice process, by making sure the client has full understanding and the broker can ready the case for submission.
“Our goal is to make the broker’s life as efficient as possible and allow you to focus on what you do best, which is providing advice,” Morris added.
He said MAB’s team was working on a document categoriser, which it was hoping to release before Christmas.
He said a quarter of documents were incorrectly categorised and AI would notify a broker if it believed any information was put in the wrong place.
There will also be technology to read documents such as bank statements and payslips to determine a client’s income and budget.
Morris said this would still require a conversation between a broker and their client to clarify details, but would shorten the process.
This will be one of the first projects MAB runs next year, Morris said, and it will involve new development teams.
MAB is currently recruiting for these teams, and they will be formed in January.
Once the document reading project is complete, the team will begin on the “guardian angel”.
Morris said: “In the future, might it be possible for some customers to receive advice through an intermediary business without an actual adviser involved?”
He said this was “possible”, but MAB would make sure that the advice involved would be “so compelling” and “so complementary” to the customer’s experience that the client would choose adviser involvement where the option was presented.
