How brokers can embrace AI without losing the human edge

Mortgage brokers face no greater challenge right now than artificial intelligence (AI) – and most are yet to find the right answer.

That is the view of Joe Stallard (pictured top), managing director of House and Holiday Home Mortgages, who told Mortgage Introducer AI sits at the top of his list of industry concerns. His argument is not that the technology is a threat to be resisted, but that the stakes of getting it wrong are high, particularly for smaller firms trying to modernise without losing the human relationships that define their value.

When asked about the biggest challenge the industry is facing, he said: "I think the obvious answer there is AI and what's that going to do to the industry and how is that going to grow and evolve. I see it as an interesting challenge."

A joint survey by the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), published in November 2024, found that 75% of UK financial services firms are already using AI, up from 58% in 2022. For consumers, that growing presence has a flip side – as AI tools become more accessible, so does the misinformation they can generate.

Clients still want a human conversation

Stallard is clear the clients his firm works with continue to place significant value on speaking to a person, particularly when the decision at hand is a mortgage, which for most borrowers represents the largest financial commitment of their lives.

"I still think that the majority of clients we deal with and help value that human advice," he said. "Maybe AI is improving processes and ways of working and ways of helping clients, and there will be more self-serve business as the straightforward vanilla stuff can get the process behind it a little bit easier."

But for anything beyond the straightforward, he argued, there remains a strong case for broker involvement. "These are for most people the biggest investment that they're making in their life," he said. "And so speaking with a human and running through options, scenarios and factors you hadn't been considered on and been challenged on after what you’ve read online, there is still a value to that advice."

That challenge function – brokers pushing clients to interrogate their own assumptions rather than simply acting on what they have read online – is one that Stallard sees as increasingly important as AI-generated information becomes more widely accessible. "We're probably seeing more work getting checked and assumptions getting checked through, ‘Well, I read this online’ or through an AI or things like that than we've ever seen before, so that’s certainly interesting," he said.

The challenge for smaller brokerages

Stallard identified smaller firms as facing a particular tension between harnessing new technology and preserving the personal touch that defines their offer. For brokerages without large operational teams, implementing AI-driven tools to reduce administrative burden could free up significant capacity, but the risk of letting that efficiency come at the cost of client relationships is one he takes seriously.

"The challenge is going to be, especially for the smaller brokerage firms, how do we implement and use this technology to improve things for our clients, but fundamentally still remain human and still celebrate that humanness and how we can help people," he said.

His own firm is actively exploring ways to use AI for repetitive back-office tasks while keeping client-facing work firmly in human hands. "For us it's about striking that balance between, okay, how can we maybe take some of the strain off our admin team through some of that repetitive task, but still make sure that we are human when people want to speak to us," he said.

Relationships that AI cannot replicate

The dimension of broker work that Stallard believes is most resistant to automation is the long-term client relationship – the kind built over years of remortgages, life changes, and evolving financial circumstances. A broker who takes on a first-time buyer and guides them through multiple transactions over decades is doing something, he argued, that no algorithm can match.

"You take a first-time buyer client and then work with them for years and years and years until they don't need a mortgage anymore, that's the goal," he said. "And actually, that relationship and getting to know people's family situation, their attitude towards risk, finance and helping them, it's something that takes time, takes longevity and takes a real human understanding to do so. That will never be replaced."