As artificial intelligence continues to reshape financial services, its role within specialist property lending is accelerating. From streamlining credit applications to enhancing risk assessment and compliance, AI-driven tools are increasingly embedded within real estate finance processes.
To bring our week of AI ‘In Focus’ across Mortgage and Property Investment magazine to a close, Rich Hanrahan, CFO at Cambridge & Counties Bank, emphasises that AI should be viewed as an enabler rather than a replacement
Two months into the year, and it is clear that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will continue to dominate the corporate, social and political agenda in 2026 – much like it did in 2025. Real estate-centric businesses and organisations – from commercial banks to brokers, financial intermediaries to surveyors – who interrogate and integrate AI tools into their business models will likely outperform those that do not.
Moreover, the next few years will undoubtedly see the development of ever-more sophisticated, smart platforms and solutions. It would be remiss of any commercial entity to not explore and optimise these opportunities.
But, from the perspective of Cambridge & Counties Bank (CCB) at least, it is also clear that while AI has enormous potential in terms of simplifying and automating administrative tasks – areas such as data analytics, information management and risk & compliance – for the front office, the human touch will continue to fundamentally drive the success of any truly customer-focused financial institution.
While CCB has invested in AI-centric tools and applications, we have also invested in our people. The number of employees at CCB is up 23% over the past three years. Without growth in our colleague base, we risk losing our strong niche in what is a highly competitive UK banking sector. Relationships – whether with direct customers or through commercial finance brokers and intermediaries – remain, now more than ever, essential to how specialist banks such as ourselves operate.
Better decisions – without replacing the need for us to make them
As a responsible B Corp certified lender, we will use AI tools and applications to help make better decisions – not replace the need for us to make them. We empower our people by automating processes wherever possible and leaving the key value-adding decisions in human hands. In such a hi-tech environment, it is important to put the customer at the heart of everything we do. At CCB we adopt a customer-first mentality, we obsess about what our customers want, rather than starting with the technology and how we ourselves might want to use it.
There are administrative tasks for clients which AI can help to cut back on; our bespoke Real Estate Finance AI tool, for example, helps customers and brokers quickly and efficiently gather the required information as part of a credit application. This then places the key data and insight in the hands of the humans within the CCB relationship teams to progress the loan to drawdown more quickly and efficiently than ever before.
Financial institutions are also investingin AI as part of Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance checks, automating the gathering of information and performing indicative suggestions to help the dedicated specialist teams accelerate the account opening processes for both deposits and lending.
The potential we see in AI is in increased operational efficiencies allowing us to reinvest in our people and our customers for mutually beneficial growth. AI can transform processes which happen quietly in the background – ones invisible to clients and which are not recognised as bringing value, despite being mandatory from a governance and procedural point of view.
In contrast, for customers and the hundreds of commercial brokers that work with SME banks, the real value comes from direct, high-quality interaction.
Opportunities – but also risks
While much of the focus around AI are the opportunities it will generate, it’s important to not ignore the risks. As with all new tech, early movers in adoption may have a competitive advantage – but there is also a need to be cautious and controlled.
CCB has spent more than a year setting up guardrails and policies for AI use. Whilst we are excited by the potential of AI, it is extremely clear to us that the fast-developing and evolving nature of AI means there is a real need for continuous oversight.
The pace of AI evolution gives real potential for smaller organisations and institutions to benefit. The previous barrier to entry of significant investment for new tech is being lowered. AI offers accessible tech development, with increased access to data for specialist banks like CCB.
Alongside the ongoing AI transformation, challenger banks like CCB will have to remain true to our core principles, continuing to build long-standing, trusted relationships as the central stem of the bank’s business model.
