While AI implementation can be a daunting task, acting thoughtfully and intentionally will set businesses up for maximum value, leading executives of leading AI software companies said during a panel at the
"It's not just where we're at today, it's your roadmaps — how everybody is thinking about this. You've got to assume that every four months there's a big step change" said Greg Jacobi, head of banking and lending at Anthropic.
Where today's agentic forms of artificial intelligence dramatically differ from what the technology looked like two years ago, in another two years, the public will also likely relate to it in a different manner as well, according to Mayur Kapani, chief technology officer
"Two years from now, we won't be talking about AI, we'll just be using it like a day-to-day tool, and it will be hidden in all the workflows that are part of our platforms we have. We won't be talking about AI agents. We'll be talking about how I can quickly look up information, get my job done," he said.
Just a few years ago, AI was just beginning to handle PDFs and didn't possess the capability to conduct any reasoning on a document or data, remarked Toby Brown, global managing director at Google Cloud for Financial Services. Today, though, "it's moving from knowing to actually act and executing, and certainly that's where we see our focus. Now we see real traction in the home lending industry."
Maximizing returns on AI investment
Getting the most value from AI isn't as simple as plugging in a tool and pressing start, panelists said. Like adoption of any new technology, they sometimes face challenges of how to tailor it for their needs and reap the full benefits
"One of the big struggles we see is customers trying to put a business case together for agentic transformation," Brown said. "The first thing we do is actually try to step back a little bit and better understand why you want to do this. What is your business strategy?"
Although artificial intelligence experts frequently tout the speed at which today's technology can accomplish tasks, sometimes in a fraction of the time it would take a human to do them, viewing it as a do-my-job type of tool brings only incremental levels of increased productivity, Jacobi said.
Instead, looking at a tool
"You're arguing with it and going back and forth with it. You're seeing what comes out of this and asking for a different perspective."
How the mortgage industry can ease apprehension
While an understandable level of uneasiness still exists among many individuals about turning over a complex mortgage process to agentic AI while remaining compliant, a measured strategy will carry companies forward, according to Kapani.
"Everybody struggles in trying to adopt the technologies, building the guardrails in terms of policies," he said. "We are working towards actually incrementally building the right guardrails, starting small, doing guided executions, followed by more autonomy as you build more trust."
As agentic AI improves, the mortgage industry stands in an ideal position to take advantage of its potential, specifically due to the high levels of regulation required, panelists also said.
"A lot of other industries haven't had to grapple with the fact that humans make mistakes and agents make mistakes. But we have these constructs and these frameworks where you have to make checklists," Jacobi said.
"That's the promise of these agents," he continued. "They are always checking. They are validating."
Still, what must not be lost is that the human sits in the driver's seat and is in charge of making technology work to their needs.
"The human is actually everywhere in this process, but the perspective is changing. Everyone's become a manager in a sense, and you are human, controlling what these agents are doing," Jacobi added.
