In this New Year’s episode of the Digital Disruption podcast, hosts Chris Williams and Pete reflect on their 2024 predictions, analyse which came true, and set out their forecasts for 2025.

Key themes from 2024 included:

• AI Disruption: Rapid advancements in AI, particularly in lending and conveyancing, but live adoption in the market lagged behind its technical capabilities.
• New AI-driven Players: While no major challengers entered the mortgage lending space, AI-driven solutions emerged in adjacent markets, such as search and automation.
• Collaboration & Infrastructure Investment: Significant progress was made in fostering cross-industry partnerships, with initiatives such as HDI (Horizontal Digital Integration) accelerating interoperability.
• Faster Home Buying & Remortgaging: While industry discussions intensified, full-scale implementation of "remortgage in a day" and "sale in a week" remains aspirational.
• Organisational Readiness & Talent Shifts: Firms investing in digital strategies and trialling new technologies saw the most progress, with AI, ML, and automation skills becoming highly sought after.

Looking ahead to 2025, the discussion focused on:

• Customer-Centricity: A major shift towards putting consumers at the heart of digital transformation efforts.
• HDI Adoption: Horizontal Digital Integration will drive predictability, improve transaction times, and reshape vendor business models.
• Strategic AI & Automation: Greater investment in AI-driven automation, potentially leading to more end-to-end process automation in remortgaging.
• Blockchain & Secure Transactions: While advancements are expected, full blockchain-based property transactions remain unlikely this year.
• Data Standards & Upfront Information: The role of data integration and standardisation will accelerate, driven by initiatives like the Data Bill.
• Sustainability & the Connected Home: ESG factors and energy efficiency will begin to influence the mortgage and home-buying process.

Chris and Pete conclude by encouraging industry professionals to develop an HDI strategy to remain competitive and avoid digital transformation fatigue. They also note the potential impact of government housing policy in driving digital adoption.

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