Yellow Brick Road Home Loans has rolled out a new AI platform to its franchise and aggregation network, aiming to cut the time it takes brokers to move a loan from lead to settlement.
Nectaria was built internally using Yellow Brick Road's own proprietary data and was unveiled to the network at the business's "Next Level" conference on the Gold Coast. Rather than functioning as a single tool, the platform runs multiple AI agents that support brokers across the full loan-writing journey — from initial lead through to settlement and ongoing client retention — alongside coaching designed to lift broader business performance.
The launch lands amid a wider industry reckoning with AI data readiness: recent research found 72% of Australian financial institutions are already using agentic AI for underwriting decision support, yet just 3% described their own data as fully AI-ready.
Mark Bouris (pictured), who founded Yellow Brick Road, framed the project as a response to a challenge he set his own team.
"At the start of this year, I challenged my team to create a best-in-class AI that supported both brokers and customers at every stage of the process," Bouris said.
He said the resulting platform was designed to free up brokers' time while giving franchises sharper insight into how to grow.
"My brief for Nectaria was to give brokers more time to write deals, give our franchises the insights that would show them how to grow their business, and to train and empower new brokers," Bouris said.
Among Nectaria's core features is the ability to record client calls and automatically map the conversation against a customer's profile, while highlighting areas for improvement and compliance considerations for the broker, and generating follow-up tasks to chase down any missing information. The platform also lets brokers search policy detail across every lender on Yellow Brick Road's panel and can be used to train new-to-industry brokers through a range of lending scenarios. A further update due in October will add a Business Coach feature aimed at tightening every stage of a broker's pipeline.
Kevin Mangano, Chief digital and marketing officer, said the platform was shaped around problems the network's brokers were already flagging, rather than replicating existing tools on the market.
"We started with common pain points for our brokers and looked to build solutions that didn't yet exist," Mangano said.
He added that acting in the interests of borrowers was central to how the platform was designed, with specific compliance features and post-interaction coaching built in throughout. Mangano said feedback from brokers who tested Nectaria has underscored its value in training newer entrants to the industry, particularly on complex lending scenarios.
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