Artificial intelligence is everywhere. It is in our inboxes, in our social feeds, in the sudden flood of formulaic content sliced across our screens. AI is in the headlines for almost every sector. Specialist finance is no exception. But while technology can sharpen processes and speed up tasks, it cannot replace human judgement or the relationships that lie at the heart of our industry.
Too often this is overlooked when we look at the impact of AI on the world of work; the conversation often drifts towards fear. What happens
when AI becomes so efficient that it eats into jobs? What happens when borrowers, brokers, and lenders simply plug into a system that can generate answers faster than any human? The truth is far less dramatic. If history is a guide, technology doesn’t wipe out professions, it reshapes them and sometimes reinvigorates them, but people always remain at the core.
Take the arrival of Excel and pivot tables in the accountancy profession. When sophisticated spreadsheets became widely available, there were dark predictions on the horizon, predictions that accountants were soon to become obsolete. Instead, the opposite happened. There are more accountants in the UK now than ever before. Rather than eliminating the need for finance professionals, spreadsheets streamlined their work. Routine number crunching became less painful, freeing accountants to advise, interpret, and apply human reasoning where it matters. They moved from bookkeeping to consultancy.
The same principle applies to specialist finance. AI can undertake a lot of the legwork, but it cannot sit down with a broker and talk through a complex case. It can’t understand the story behind the numbers or weigh up the intricacies of risk and reward in the way people can. It cannot build trust. It cannot evoke human emotion in marketing campaigns. It cannot use personality in social media posts. It cannot listen. And in a people-first business like Black & White Bridging, it never will.
That’s not to say AI has no role. Used properly, it can streamline processes that too often tie up valuable time. Automating basic administration, data checks, and repetitive tasks is useful, but that’s it. AI shouldn’t be used to write content or communicate with clients. It has no place in marketing collateral or social media platforms. Efficiency is important, but in our world, effectiveness depends on relationships. When a deal is stuck or a case looks complex, no amount of automation can resolve the tightly bound knot. That is when people lean on people.
The temptation in business is to present each new technology as a transformational upheaval. The reality is usually evolution, rather than revolution. In specialist finance, the so-called AI revolution looks a lot more like a new set of tools.Tools that can provide efficiency benefits and ultimately free up employees to deliver a greater level of service.
This is why our position is clear: we are a people-first business. That means our decisions, our conversations, our communications and our partnerships will always be driven by humans. AI may sit in the background, making administrative processes smoother, but the face of Black & White will always be people.
There is also an honesty required here Clients are already growing weary of AI that tries to pretend it is human. The peculiar sentence structure. The use of the word “underscore”. The unmistakable fingerprints of machine-written copy like the double dashes, green ticks and emojis. It’s all too easy to spot. On LinkedIn in particular, excessiv
e use of emojis alongside uniform, generic copy is a dead giveaway that a post has been written by AI, on a platform designed to facilitate professional networking. In finance, where trust is everything, this matters. If clients sense they are being palmed off to a machine, they will know they aren’t valued. Furthermore, it is false and disingenuousto use AI in any client-facing capacity.
Specialist finance is built on relationships that take years to nurture and grow. Every conversation, every deal, every moment of painstakingly precise problem-solving adds to a foundation of trust. It is not a commodity that can be replaced by software. In fact, relying too heavily on AI risks eroding that trust. The best technology doesn’t replace relationships; it clears the space for them to thrive.
This is where the comparison with Excel spreadsheets is worth keeping in mind. Excel didn’t wipe out accountants. It created space for them to offer higher-value work. AI won’t wipe out specialist finance professionals either. It will simply strip away some of the administrative noise, giving brokersand lenders more time to focus on the heart of the matter: people helping people to find solutions.
At Black & White Bridging, we welcome any tools that make life more efficient. But we are confident we will never confuse efficiency with empathy. Technology can handle numbers, but it is people that can handle nuance. And in an industry as complex and human as ours, nuance is everything.
The future of specialist finance will not be written by machines. It will continue to be written by brilliant people who know that trust cannot be automated, judgement cannot be outsourced, and relationships cannot be coded. That is why, however loud the hype becomes, we will always remain people first, without the green ticks.