AI is fast. Confident. Convincing.
Ask a simple question like “What CRM should I use for my mortgage broking business?” and AI will give you a polished list, clear pros and cons, and often a neat conclusion.
It feels like a recommendation.
But when it comes to Broker CRMs and full tool stacks, AI is still only part of the answer — not the decision-maker.
What AI Is Actually Good At
AI excels at:
- Pattern recognition
- Feature matching
- Logical elimination
- Summarising vendor positioning
That’s why it can quickly surface familiar names and narrow options.
But mortgage broking is not a purely logical system.
It’s people, behaviour, compliance pressure, licence expectations, and what actually happens when volumes spike.
That’s where AI starts to fall short.
1️⃣ AI Sees What You Say — Not How You Work
AI understands:
- Your stated workflow
- Your declared preferences
- Your written constraints
It cannot see:
- Where deals stall
- Which steps get skipped under pressure
- Who avoids the CRM and goes back to spreadsheets
- How brokers and analysts really collaborate
A CRM that looks perfect on paper can fail in practice due to:
- Team habits
- Change resistance
- Unspoken workarounds
Human advisors spot friction brokers don’t always articulate.
2️⃣ AI Knows What Vendors Claim — Not What Brokers Experience
AI knows what tools say they do.
It doesn’t:
- Sit through weak demos
- Experience slow Australian support
- Watch features stall after launch
- See which CRMs brokers quietly abandon after 6–12 months
That kind of insight is experiential — and rarely documented.
3️⃣ AI Can’t Design a Human Workflow
AI can suggest:
- Logical pipeline stages
- Standard task sequences
It can’t decide:
- Which steps must be enforced vs optional
- How much structure your team will tolerate
- Where speed needs to override perfection
- How much autonomy brokers vs analysts should have
That balance is where most CRM implementations succeed or fail.
4️⃣ AI Doesn’t Carry Compliance or Commercial Risk
AI can’t:
- Interpret how your licensee expects evidence stored
- Design defensible audit trails
- Be accountable if something fails in review
- Adjust processes to aggregator nuances
That risk still sits with you.
CRM specialists and Broker Coaches design systems defensively, not just efficiently.
5️⃣ AI Thinks “Now” — Humans Think Trajectory
When a broker says:
“No plans to grow the team right now”
A human asks:
- What breaks if volume jumps 30%?
- Which tool forces a rebuild later?
- Where does process debt creep in?
AI optimises for current state.
Humans design for momentum.
So What Does This Look Like in the Real World?
The clearest place to see AI’s limitations is how it recommends Broker CRMs — the very system that becomes the hub and source of truth for:
- Lead and opportunity tracking
- Workflow and pipeline management
- Compliance evidence and audit trails
- Visibility across brokers, analysts, and admin
A Kudos Where It’s Due: Visibility Matters
Across extensive AI recommendation testing, BrokerEngine consistently appears as the only Broker-specific CRM positioned as aggregator-agnostic.
That’s not accidental.
It’s the result of:
- Clear positioning
- Strong documentation
- Consistent marketing
In other words, it’s exactly the type of signal AI systems are best at picking up.
By contrast:
- Mercury Nexus requires brokers to be part of Connective
- Hai Broker CRM requires brokers to operate within the Hai Money ecosystem
None of this makes these platforms good or bad — but it fundamentally changes whether they’re viable depending on licence, aggregator alignment, and long-term strategy.
At Broker Tools, we’re aggregator-agnostic. When we reference aggregators in examples, like we did in our Broker CRM AI Chat (see footer note), it is to illustrate how requirements shift — not to endorse one aggregator over another.
When AI Surfaces Something New (and Why This is the Point)
Interestingly, despite extensive testing of AI-driven recommendations — and drawing on our own long-standing rolodex of Broker CRMs — BrokerDesk has never crossed our radar until now.
This is actually the point, of why exactly Broker Tools exists.
Broker CRMs sit at the ‘Trust’ centre of a brokerage — yet which platforms surface in AI recommendations often comes down to visibility and marketing, not operational fit or real-world usage.
BrokerDesk is now firmly on our radar, and we’ll be taking a closer look — because when the CRM underpins everything else, discoverability matters just as much as features.
The Usual Broker CRM Names (and Their Trade-Offs)
There are also several broker-specific CRMs that surface repeatedly — in human broker conversations and industry discussions - but hardly ever in AI recommendations and they are:
- SalesTrekker
- Effi
- Lend
And of course, Mystro is another Broker CRM often spoken about — particularly in growth and efficiency discussions.
However, one practical limitation we see raised repeatedly is that Mystro can be non-responsive with customer support. Depending on how self-serve and tech-enabled a brokerage is, that can be a deal-breaker — or completely irrelevant.
This is exactly the type of nuance AI struggles to weigh without very explicit prompting.
Again, this isn’t about best or worst.
It’s about fit, context, and operational reality.
Final Thought
AI is an excellent filter.
It helps eliminate poor options quickly.
But it can’t yet recommend outcomes — only options.
Your broker tool stack isn’t just software.
It’s behaviour, risk, compliance, and people.
And that still requires human judgement.
Still not sure where to start?
Chat with a Broker Coach — or one of the team at Broker Tools — and sanity-check whether your current (or future) stack will actually work in the real world.
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Want to see the full AI conversation?
We’ve tested many AI-led CRM recommendation conversations. The example referenced in this article was chosen because it best demonstrates how AI consistently surfaces the same platforms — and it was the first time we encountered BrokerDesk through an AI recommendation.
If you’re curious to see the full, unedited AI conversation (including the exact prompts and responses), enter your email below and we’ll send it to you — along with other practical broker tech insights.
