68% would let AI accept a home loan for them.

Most credit-active Australians say they would let an artificial intelligence agent accept a home loan on their behalf, according to survey figures discussed on the Property Buzz podcast, a result host Phil Tarrant said could end in a royal commission.

The research, attributed on the podcast to Experian and covering almost 500 Australians, found 68 per cent said they would allow an AI agent to accept a loan based on preset criteria. Some 81 per cent were comfortable with AI searching for offers, 77 per cent were open to an AI negotiating a better deal and 69 per cent were comfortable with AI completing identity checks.

Tarrant rejected the idea outright when asked whether he would let an AI bind him to a loan without seeing it.

"No, like why would anyone not check that?" he said, after being asked whether he would be comfortable being obliged to a loan an agent had accepted for him.

He warned that mass adoption of the practice would produce the same fallout as previous financial services scandals. "If that happens, it'll be like robo-debt. It'll be like, you will get a royal commission of these people going, I didn't really know what I was signing. I didn't really get it."

'You're not getting a better deal, you're just getting the deal'

Tarrant was also sceptical of the idea that an AI agent could negotiate better pricing, arguing that lenders set hard floors and an automated negotiation would simply run down to them.

"There's no negotiation here because you've got to say, here's our floor, under these circumstances and these conditions, borrower X, the cheapest rate we'll give them is this," he said. "So all you're going to do is just drive down to whatever that point is. So you're not getting a better deal. You would be comfortable. No, you're just getting the deal."

He argued the bigger structural problem is ownership of the technology. If a bank builds and owns the AI agent, he said, it will only ever surface products from its own shelf.

"AI-orientated home loans as a vehicle for getting to Australia's the best deal is hugely compromised because it's never, ever going to be the best deal if it's only assessing the product suite available inside of a lender," Tarrant said.

The panel noted that open banking could change that by putting every lender's offers, deals and rates into a single pool, but Tarrant countered that the party already operating across the whole market is the mortgage broker.

Banks holding back on risk, not capability

The discussion noted that major banks have been investing heavily in AI but have been slow to release customer-facing agents, with risk and governance cited as the constraint rather than technical capability. The concern raised was that lenders want to be confident borrowers understand what they are signing, and that know-your-customer requirements are met.

It was also noted that many banks are still running decades-old core banking systems, even as their consumer-facing platforms advance.

Where AI is likely to deliver the most immediate value, the panel agreed, is in document handling and fraud detection. New tools rolled out through aggregators can instantly check the metadata on pay slips to verify they are genuine, a response to criminals using AI to produce fake documents.

Tarrant said the paperwork burden alone makes the case for automation. "I put it to anyone, if you get, for me to get a home loan, like I need, the stack of paper is this high," he said.

Brokers not going anywhere

Tarrant said he still subscribes to a view put to him by a Salesforce futurist in San Francisco in 2017: that advancing technology would support the role of the financial adviser, broker or accountant rather than replace it.

"There may not be as many brokers around and broking may be done differently. And there may be a lot simpler the process for most people, or some people to get home loans, but there's still gonna be such a need for human connectivity interaction," he said.

"I'm not really yet to trust the machine to tell me where I need to go. But I'll use it to give me all the clues that I need."

Brokers were reported as saying their role is already shifting because borrowers are arriving better educated, often having used AI to research first, and that clients still prefer the phone over email.

Tarrant's blunt advice to anyone tempted to hand over the keys: read the contract. "Don't let an agent sign you up for something because you need to read your contract."

Listen to the full episode: Australia’s Mortgage Madness!