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A start-up company is trying to modernise and change the way we choose a mortgage – by creating a robot that can dish out advice.
Tech firm habito has created the world’s first artificially intelligent Digital Mortgage Adviser (DMA), which can be accessed from the web or any mobile device and used at any time to offer advice on mortgage structure.
It works by taking the key elements of a person’s financial life – for example their job, salary and life plans – and uses its central algorithm to match these with real-time market mortgage rates to calculate monthly payments.
Habito said the key is that the DMA can calculate more options and present them to customers in a fraction of the time that a human broker could gather the same information. It is also able to give more options because it can analyse hundreds of deals as opposed to a handful at a time.
Communication with the DMA comes in the form of a chatbot – similar to those introduced to Facebook Messenger this year – enabling customers to have a conversation with the computer in a format that feels as though they are messaging a human.
Daniel Hegarty, the CEO and founder of habito, said: “Finding the right mortgage product in the UK is like finding a needle in a haystack. Britons are crying out for some innovation and clarity in an outdated and overwhelming mortgage market.
“Our digital mortgage adviser is a huge step forward in making mortgage advice accessible for consumers in the way they need it most: unbiased, always available and, most importantly, free.”
