AI sees black and white, do brokers understand the grey? – Davidson
Technology likes questions with clear answers. Yes or no. Eligible or ineligible. Affordable or unaffordable.
Yet as we all know, customers do not live their lives in neat columns and good mortgage advice is rarely black and white. It exists in the grey areas, where circumstances conflict, priorities compete and somebody must exercise judgement.
That is particularly true in later life lending, where even the word “grey” has a useful double meaning. Artificial intelligence (AI) can process enormous quantities of information. It can summarise criteria, compare products and identify possible solutions more quickly than any individual mortgage adviser. We should embrace that. If technology can reduce administration and give brokers more time to spend with customers, it will improve our industry.
However, information is not advice, and an answer is not a judgement. Other professions understand this distinction. A doctor does not simply match symptoms to a treatment.
Test results and clinical evidence matter, but applying them to an individual patient requires judgement. A lawyer may have access to every relevant statute and precedent, but still has to weigh evidence, consequences and competing interpretations.
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The answer is not always clear cut
Mortgage advice is no different.
A sourcing system can identify what is technically possible. A broker must decide what is most suitable and nowhere is that more apparent than with older borrowers.
A customer in their 70s might be eligible for a standard repayment mortgage, a retirement interest-only mortgage or a lifetime mortgage. Each could solve the immediate problem, but each carries different implications for monthly expenditure, future flexibility and the value of the estate.
There is no formula which can decide how much importance that particular customer should place upon each of those things. One person may be determined to preserve every possible pound of inheritance. Another may value having no mandatory monthly payment above everything else. A third may initially talk about inheritance because they feel guilty about spending money which they regard as belonging to their children.
The figures might be identical, but the right conversation will not be, and this is precisely where human judgement earns its place
It means listening for the question behind the question. It means recognising when a customer understands the explanation but remains emotionally uncomfortable with the decision. It can also mean challenging someone sensitively when the preference they express appears inconsistent with the life they say they want.
Expertise commands more than data sets
Decisions involving uncertainty cannot always be reduced to data because values are part of the decision. Empathy matters because it helps the professional understand those values; judgement matters because it determines how they should influence the recommendation.
This is also why good salesmanship should not be treated as something separate from good advice.
Sales can still be regarded as a slightly dirty word in our profession, as though helping somebody reach a decision must involve pressure. Done properly, selling is not about forcing a customer towards an outcome. It is about giving them sufficient clarity and confidence to act when action is in their interests.
An experienced broker notices hesitation. They know when to ask another question, when to offer reassurance and when to stop talking. They can judge whether a customer needs more information or simply needs help making sense of the information already provided.
AI may be able to imitate empathetic language, but empathy is not merely the production of a sympathetic sentence. It is understanding why this person, in these circumstances, is finding this decision difficult and adapting the conversation accordingly.
Advice will always have a place
Brokers therefore have far less to fear from AI than some headlines suggest.
The technology will undoubtedly perform more of the mechanical work involved in arranging mortgages. It may expose businesses whose service consists of little more than completing forms and conducting product searches, but that should not frighten professional advisers.
Instead, it should remind us where our value really lies.
We know that older borrowers are not a single category. Age alone tells us remarkably little about somebody’s health, income, ambitions, family relationships or attitude towards debt. Treating everyone above an arbitrary age as though they have the same needs is precisely the kind of black-and-white thinking that holistic later life advice should challenge.
The future should not be human or technology. It should be technology doing what it does best so that brokers have more time to do what we do best, which is to listen, interpret, reassure, challenge and take responsibility. AI deals in probability, but brokers deal in consequence.
Mortgage advice has never been entirely black and white. Its greatest value has always existed in the shades of grey and that is exactly where human judgement matters most.
