Mortgages.scot

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all around us at the moment. Apple explained how they bring AI to iPhones at this week's Worldwide Developer Conference. Microsoft has also announced that new Windows CoPilot laptops will arrive next week and bring AI.

AI is in the media almost daily for positive and negative reasons wherever you look.

One significant concern about AI is whether it will take jobs away from us and whether it will likely process mortgages for us without the need for Mortgage Advisors or call centres.

The simple answer is no. Well, not yet. I will cover some of the most common questions about AI and mortgages that I hear.

Will AI replace mortgage advisors?

No. Not yet, at least.

Mortgages are generally taken out by anyone purchasing a home to live in and are heavily regulated. The industry regulators, FCA and PRA, have already raised caution and concern about lenders relying too much on AI too quickly.

Regulators and industry stakeholders are genuinely concerned that another mortgage crisis could occur due to AI giving incorrect advice.

Could AI do what a mortgage advisor could? In time, perhaps, but it's many years away.

What could AI do for the mortgage process?

There is much AI could do to help customers and lenders during the process. But much of it is already being done today before AI gets involved. These include:

Offer customers a range of product options based on the information they provide.

• Review and assess customers' credit records.
• Provide an Approval in Principle.
• Generate documents based on the agreed mortgage.

All lenders have systems today that do all of this. AI could make it happen faster, likely more efficiently.

However, other areas are likely to improve as a result of AI, such as customer service. I am with First Direct, and I like their current chatbot. I can ask it questions, and it gives me answers quickly before I need to speak to anyone. I opened an ISA recently using their chatbot. Once I went through the questions, it told me a human would need to review them, but I was not needed for that and could leave while they got it all sorted out.

AI could improve that part of the process and make it more human-like. It could provide more informative responses than current chatbots and more information based on my questions. If that resulted in me being able to do something fast and without waiting, I am sure we can all benefit.

There are more areas it could help with, but you get the idea.

Time will tell, but we are a long way from a takeover!

AI will undoubtedly have positive and negative impacts. One thing is certain: All AI needs to be given information to provide information, which needs humans.

Allowing AI to make decisions based on customer inputs today is dangerous.

The most popular service today is ChatGPT. I use it myself; it's excellent, but it gets it wrong. It's also reliant on information on the Internet that was put there by humans; it's incapable of simply learning a subject and teaching it accurately or always returning the right answer.

There is no doubt AI development is going to move at speed. In the first instance, it will pick up those more trivial repetitive tasks that it can without getting wrong but do faster than anyone. However, as noted above, it will be many years before we can trust it, and regulators will be comfortable trusting it when it comes to mortgage processing.