UK mortgage market had been waiting for a sign. Despite the Bank of England holding interest rates, some mortgage providers are moving forward with reducing their rates motivated by the recent rate cuts by US FED and the European Central Bank.
It is hoped that this will bring back some vitality to the UK housing market. In the meantime, while many property and mortgage professionals have shown their disappointment with Bank of England for dragging their heels in setting rates. Others have jumped at the opportunity to prepare themselves for a wave of potential new leads, by improving their lead generation tech stack.
Sam Oliver, founder of OpenFi, a startup working with conversational AI for lead generation and customer nurture wants to help brokers make the leap. He is not new in the real estate and property investment universe. So that’s why he knows how AI could provide mortgage lenders with a much-needed hand when pre-qualifying and nurturing leads.
According to him, though 81% of sales require 7 follow-ups, 44% of salespeople give up after just one. For this reason, OpenFi has developed SuperHuman Hunters – AI agents that reach out to old clients; and SuperHuman Farmers – AI agents that chat to and pre-qualify prospects. Recently, The Mortgage Genie has become the first UK mortgage broker to adopt this cutting-edge technology.
We sat down with Oliver to learn more about why should mortgage brokers start adopting conversational AI now, ahead of potential cuts.
For him, many consumers have been holding off on taking out a mortgage while they wait for interest rates to drop. And when the BoE base rate drops, it will cause a flood of leads to rush through to brokers. “They won’t have the capacity ready in time to scale up with demand. It’s a perfect use case for AI. Enabling brokers to scale up ‘AI labour’ quickly and easily as they have never been able to do before, in response to market changes,” says Oliver.
The time factor
When we talk about the key benefits for mortgage brokers and lenders in using AI-driven tools for pre-qualifying and nurturing leads, something stands out. Brokers have a time scarcity problem. Their work is heavily relationship driven and they can only give face time and focus to their most valuable clients.
“Utilising conversational AI enables them to provide warm personalized customer service at scale which is a huge competitive advantage as they will convert many more leads, and win a lot more repeat business,” adds Sam.
With The Mortgage Genie becoming the first UK mortgage broker to adopt OpenFi’s technology, something is on the horizon. This could start shaping the tech used by the real estate market in the UK. For Oliver, the adoption is inevitable and the floodgates are ready to be open. The early adopters, he suggests, will be the big winners of this scenario.
The future of AI in financial services
With 81% of sales requiring multiple follow-ups, many salespeople give up early. In a way, it’s understandable because sales professionals must focus on the highest-value opportunities. But this also means that other leads that need extra time spent on nurturing and extra attention are missed out. In this use case, Oliver says that AI enables cost-effective scaling of ‘labour’ so that brokerages can now access virtually unlimited human personalised time and energy for nurture and engagement of leads.
The CEO and Founder considers that this is the future of financial services, even if this is a highly regulated and conservative market. “Conversational AI will provide a ‘labour’ multiplier helping businesses leverage employees’ time and enabling higher value work to be carried out. Over the following years, the sophistication of tasks AI is able to take on will increase. More and more employees will become ‘AI managers’ directing their AI resources as they would with junior team members, while they scale their business units,” concludes Oliver.
