Is ChatGPT the death of mortgage brokers?

For people in jobs which do the hard slog for a time-poor public, ChatGPT may help not hinder – especially in one particular area of business. Paul Watkins explains.

The power of this technology is only just being understood.

Even with recent enhancements, ChatGPT is still in its infancy, but to quote one hyped-up commentator, “This may be as big as the industrial revolution”.

A bit exaggerated I feel, but the question is this: what should you do? Ignore it? Just treat is as a better way to search than Google? Or can you use it to benefit the marketing of your brokerage?

Having read widely on the topic, it’s clear to me that its immediate value is in the areas of enhancing marketing activity and messages.

I will focus mainly on the upside of ChatGPT to your firm, but also touch on some potential negatives.

The first point to note is that your clients will use this new service to search for information about mortgages.

ChatGPT is a tool which can create personalised mortgage choices and suggestions based on client input, such as location, salary, house price and other factors affecting their credit rating.

Of course, you can also use AI for this yourself as an internal tool.

The downside here is that the value of using an adviser may become lost to some prospects, particularly Gen Z who are very tech savvy. Time will tell.

On a positive note, chatbots backed by AI have the potential to provide wellinformed answers to prospect and client questions, and would be available on your website 24/7.

This will enhance your perceived levels of service, as the answers can often appear to be written by a human.

Content for blog and newsletter articles are an obvious use of the new technology. To generate these, give ChatGPT such requests as, “Give me a list of 15 things people should know about mortgages before taking one out.”

The results can now become your article headlines.

Then ask ChatGPT about each of these headlines individually. The result is the basis of an article; you just need to do some quick editing or add your own style. Let me give you a single, edited-down example.

I asked ChatGPT: “Some actions I can take if concerned about the impact of higher mortgage-interest rates on my finances.” Here are the results:

1. Change the terms of your mortgage. You might be able to get some relief by renegotiating your loan, especially if you've had it for a while.

2. Assess the impact of the rate increases. It's important to understand how much your payments will go up with each rate increase.

Generally, every percentage point increase in interest rates adds $1,000 per year per $100,000 borrowed. Knowing this can help you plan and budget.

The results also showed up two more answers, one about considering longerterm fixed rates and the fourth about how you should consult a financial adviser or mortgage broker before doing anything.

This last one is obviously in your favour.

Mortgage advisers require a good pipeline of leads, progressively moving prospects from awareness to interest to desire to action, given no finalised sale is achieved in a single day.

To get these leads, social media is a good option to make your presence known, usually promoting a ‘lead magnet.’ doing for them.

ChatGPT can help you brainstorm, create and even populate the lead magnet, usually in the form of a short e-book or downloadable PDF document.

You can ask ChatGPT such things as suggesting an engaging title, how to create the sale funnel, and ideas for the content of the follow-up emails.

All sound simple? Sadly, not at all.

The first step is to familiarise yourself with ChatGPT.

Go into it and take on the role of a prospect wanting a mortgage to buy a new home.

But it’s still early days. For now, don’t panic or rush into changing your search strategy in Google, or your methods of promotion.

Even if a prospect becomes highly informed about how to go about getting a mortgage, the ace up your sleeve is that you can offer confirmation or advice on what they discovered.

And the biggie? You do all the work for them.

Ask loads of questions about mortgages, house buying, interest rates, challenges, house prices, and so on.

As you do so, you will learn how to refine the questions to get answers that make sense.

Most answers will give a reference to a website as the authority it took the information from, which will rarely be your own website. Oh dear.

What will also become apparent is that so long as your questions are wellconstructed, your role as an adviser may be challenged.

The prospect will learn a lot about how to do for themselves what you should be

In my opinion, mortgage advisers should embrace ChatGPT as a social media, blog and newsletter content aid. Familiarise yourselves with its power; watch relevant YouTube videos on the subject, which are currently being posted at the rate of many per day.

AI is not going away. Its use and power will grow exponentially, as all technologies do - and as people’s imagination sparks new ways to use it.

Many headlines predict that it will replace jobs and it probably will, but not ones which require a high level of expertise or which take the hard slog out of a process for the time-poor public.

So is ChatGPT the death of mortgage brokers? Nope! ✚

Paul Watkins is a marketing adviser to the financial services industry.