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Research from the major bank has revealed financial services SMEs are one of the main users of AI in their businesses.
According to NAB’s latest SME Business Insights report, small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) within the financial services space are among the leading industries in understanding and investing in the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
The research found that 28 per cent of finance & insurance SMEs had a clear understanding of AI and indicated eagerness to explore its possibilities, while 46 per cent also understood the concept and how it could benefit their businesses.
By contrast, only 22 per cent of retail SMEs indicated an understanding and how it could help the business.
Additionally, 0 per cent of financial services SMEs indicated zero awareness or understanding of AI, compared to one in five SMEs in both transport and storage (21 per cent) and construction (21 per cent) industries.
In terms of SMEs that have already invested in AI use or other emerging technology, 36 per cent of finance and insurance businesses said they already have, while 31 per cent indicated future plans to invest.
Furthermore, reduced admin tasks were a primary benefit for this cohort, with 74 per cent of financial services SMEs indicating as such.
However, the barriers to using emerging tech solutions was still prevalent, with 56 per cent of finance SMEs stating they need to have training, 41 per cent don’t have the time, and 36 per cent cited price as a major barrier.
AI in the mortgage broking sphere
The mortgage broking industry has quickly been adopting the use of AI for day-to-day operations and embracing all the benefits that come with it.
NAB’s report came as Lendi Group chief executive and co-founder David Hyman revealed how the broking group is using AI to “revolutionise” the thousands of hours of administrative tasks taken on by brokers.
Hyman outlined two AI initiatives for 2024: a powered broker assistant for brokers to summarise broker and customer interactions and an AI bot to fast-track brokers’ policy-related queries across the 2,500 products within the group’s platform.
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The former – which the group has already begun to roll out – is set to save brokers “1,000s of hours annually”, according to Lendi Group.
“Emerging from a company-wide and broker ‘hackathon’ last year, it became clear the biggest problems we could use generative AI to solve for brokers was finding a solution to the 30 minutes for every customer interaction that takes place drafting post-call summaries and a further 30 minutes for every customer researching lending policies and the right data sources to answer customer queries,” Hyman said.
According to Hyman, the “conservative estimate” of these AI tools once productionised is 8,600 hours of associates’ time and 44,800 hours of broker time, which amount to “multimillion-dollar operational savings annually”.
[RELATED: Brokerage rolls out AI to save brokers ‘thousands of hours’]
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