The mortgage industry has become increasingly comfortable talking about artificial intelligence, and that's a really positive sign. However, what receives far less attention is the environment AI needs if it is to deliver meaningful improvements. That distinction may seem subtle, but it could prove to be the difference between firms that simply adopt the latest technology and those that genuinely improve the way mortgage advice is delivered.
The latest research from Dynamic Planner suggests AI has firmly moved beyond the experimental stage. The number of advice professionals actively using AI is said to have increased by 46% since 2025, with more than two in five advisers (41%) now incorporating it into their businesses. Almost every firm surveyed believes AI will have a positive impact, while the number saying they have no plans to use it has effectively disappeared altogether.
Much like video conferencing, electronic signatures and sourcing software before it, AI has become yet another integral business tool and its competitive advantage will increasingly come from how effectively firms apply it, rather than whether they use it at all.
If AI is becoming standard business technology, the next question is where it goes from here. That shift in thinking was reflected in a recent speech by FCA chief executive Nikhil Rathi, who suggested the industry should already be looking beyond today's generation of AI tools. Rather than focusing solely on systems that summarise documents or answer questions, he described a future where intelligent software not only supports financial decisions but also coordinates activity and helps execute transactions across multiple organisations. The important caveat, of course, is that these should always operate with appropriate human oversight and accountability.
This is particularly relevant in a mortgage market where the challenge has never been a lack of information, but the number of places that information has to travel. As we all know, a typical mortgage case passes between brokers, lenders, conveyancers, valuers and other third parties, each using different systems and processes. Every stage creates valuable information, yet too much of it remains locked within separate platforms before being copied into emails, uploaded to portals or manually transferred elsewhere. The process works, but every unnecessary hand-off creates delay, duplication and the potential for error.
Another important factor to raise at this point is that artificial intelligence is only as effective as the quality of the data it receives. If information is incomplete, inconsistent or trapped inside disconnected platforms, AI simply accelerates existing processes rather than improving them. The real opportunity lies in connecting the systems already used across the mortgage journey, allowing trusted information to move securely between participants. Once that foundation is in place, intelligent technology can begin supporting entire workflows rather than isolated administrative tasks.
This is where the FCA's vision of agentic AI becomes particularly interesting. It moves beyond using AI simply to summarise information or automate individual tasks. Instead, it focuses on technology capable of managing workflows, coordinating actions and helping progress transactions across multiple organisations. As the FCA itself recognised, many of the barriers to scaling AI are likely to come down to data availability, integration and shared infrastructure rather than the capability of the models themselves. For the mortgage market, that makes the quality of the underlying technology every bit as important as the AI sitting on top of it.
We are already beginning to see the first signs of that evolution. Dynamic Planner reports that one in ten firms are now using chatbots or AI agents to support clients, describing 2026 as the year agentic AI begins to enter mainstream financial services. That figure is likely to rise rapidly as firms become more confident in applying the technology to routine customer interactions and administrative processes.
Agentic AI may dominate today's conversation, but its long-term value will depend on the foundations beneath it. For the mortgage market, that means thinking less about AI in isolation and more about creating the connected digital ecosystem that allows it to deliver meaningful improvements for brokers, lenders and, ultimately, borrowers.
