The idea

Australian mortgage brokers now write 75% of all new home loans, up from 56% in 2017. Broker market share is at a record high. The competition isn't between brokers and banks anymore. It's between brokers and other brokers. In that environment, the practices that can process more files at lower cost with faster turnaround are the ones that grow. AI is what creates that advantage.

Why it matters

When the market was growing and broker share was rising, efficiency gaps were easier to absorb. In a mature, highly competitive broker market, those gaps compound directly into lost clients and slower growth.

The practices using AI to reduce administrative overhead aren't cutting costs in isolation. They're giving their brokers more capacity for the work that actually wins and retains clients — and that advantage widens every quarter.

Broker Pulse research from August 2025 found that while 68% of Australian brokers have some level of AI skills, only 1% report using it effectively in their daily workflow. The window to build that advantage before it becomes table stakes is still open, but it's narrowing.

The Alvo take

The highest-value AI applications for mortgage broking practices sit in three areas: document handling and data extraction, removing manual re-entry from fact-find to submission; client follow-up and communication sequencing, where AI handles timing and drafting while the broker owns the relationship; and compliance note preparation, where AI drafts BID notes from call transcripts. None of these change the broker relationship. They reduce the cost per file and return time to the work that earns commission.

75% broker market share means the competition is now between practices, not channels. The brokerages building AI-assisted operations today are setting a cost and capacity benchmark that manual operations will find increasingly difficult to match.

Sources: MFAA Industry Intelligence Service Report 2024. Broker Pulse, Agile Market Intelligence, August 2025.