OSB's Adrian Moloney discusses how data and AI are reshaping how brokers do business
OSB Group’s newly promoted group lending distribution director, Adrian Moloney, is clear about where he thinks the next phase of competition in specialist lending will play out – not in headline rates or product menus, but in how easy it is for brokers to get complex cases over the line.
Moloney, who now leads the group’s lending strategy across Precise, Rely and InterBay as well as its digital and AI strategy for brokers, says his expanded remit is ultimately about one thing: making it simpler for intermediaries to do business.
“We’re probably the biggest specialist lender in the UK – but we also want to be the easiest lender for our broker partners to use,” he told Mortgage Introducer.
Choice, complexity, and the demand for certainty
From Moloney’s vantage point, the specialist market is more intermediary‑driven than ever, and brokers are facing a paradox: greater choice, but a lot of similarity between lenders’ propositions.
“For brokers, what they’ve got is more choice than they’ve had over the years,” he said. “But there’s a lot of similarity in offering.”
That, he argues, is where the “next battleground” lies: the overall journey, the simplicity of process and the predictability of outcomes.
“I always come back to the question: why should a specialist borrower’s journey be more friction‑filled than a prime borrower’s?” he said. “Some products will always be more complex, but the expectation on experience is now the same.”
The friction nobody has fixed
Moloney is quick to acknowledge that the industry has moved on from clunky portals and paper-heavy processes.
“If you look at valuations, property data, lender portals – there have been huge improvements,” he said. “Most lenders have invested in digital front‑ends, and brokers have strong sales teams and human support around that.”
But one part of the chain, he says, still hasn’t evolved at the same pace: the post‑offer legal and conveyancing journey.
“If I look at the technology stack that lenders have had, it’s all of a sudden moving very quickly. It’s taken a while to get to where we are today, but I think you’ll see massive improvements over the next two, three years.”
He points to the way AI is already creeping into legal work.
“You already see AI being used more in the legal profession – contract reading, people doing some of that work up front,” he said.
The contrast with what’s already possible at the front end can be stark.
“You could have an offer [very soon] – we’ve done it in two working hours,” he said. “It’s great if you’ve got your mortgage offer there in two hours, but if your legal process takes three or six months, it makes that whole experience feel a lot longer.”
Automating the right things – and freeing up humans for the rest
Moloney is wary of framing the conversation as “AI versus humans”. Instead, he argues, the question is how to use digital tools so that underwriters and brokers can focus on the genuinely nuanced decisions.
“We looked carefully at what underwriters were actually doing,” he explains. “Things like certain aspects of property assessment or collecting information we’ve always historically asked for in long documents – business plans, cashflow forecasts – can often be structured and captured within the journey itself.”
By using data and more intelligent workflows, rather than asking for multiple uploads and free‑form documents, he says lenders can strip out a lot of manual handling.
“What it frees them up to do is to look at those cases that are much more complex and which needs that human interaction,” he said.
He expects similar changes to continue on the intermediary side.
“There are plenty of tasks brokers do that are ripe for automation – re‑keying information from one system to another, basic checks, administrative steps,” he says. “We’re already seeing tools that pull fact‑find data straight through into lender or sourcing systems. That’s exactly the kind of thing that should be automated.”
None of this, in his view, diminishes the importance of advice.
“Taking out a mortgage is a huge decision,” he says. “People might research online or use AI tools, but particularly for complex cases, they still want to sit down – virtually or in person – with a broker and get proper advice. Technology should be freeing brokers to spend more time on that.”
Can digital really level the playing field with the high street?
Many smaller and specialist lenders now talk openly about digital transformation as a way to compete more effectively with the high street. Moloney is sceptical of any simple “David versus Goliath” narrative – but agrees that technology can help smaller players scale and sustain their niches.
“You’ve got to move with the times,” he says. “For smaller specialist lenders and building societies, digital can help build scale and take some of the cost and friction out of what they do – especially where they’re operating in very specific niches.”
However, he is blunt about the price tag.
“This isn’t a cheap process,” he says. “You need investment and deep enough pockets to do it properly. We’ve publicly set out the level of spend we’ve committed to transformation in our own financial reporting – there is a meaningful cost to doing this well. But if you can make that investment, it sets you up for the future.”
The question, he suggests, is not whether smaller lenders want to modernise, but whether they can access the capital and partnerships needed to do so at scale.
Intermediaries at the centre – if they move with the change
For all the talk of automation and AI, Moloney keeps returning to one constant: the centrality of brokers.
“I firmly believe in mortgage advice and in the intermediary channel,” he said.
The challenge now, as he sees it, is to harness new tools in a way that leaves brokers better informed, better equipped and still firmly in control of the customer relationship.
