Cynario, a new platform powered by artificial intelligence, is here.
The site, which is designed to help brokers stay on top of the constantly evolving lender space, launches today, the brainchild of former MoneyQuest broker Michael Richardson (pictured) and tech exec Russell Lewis.
Melbourne-based Richardson's pathway into the mortgage broker space began in 2021. At the time, he said the hardest part about becoming a broker was remembering all of the various lender policies.
"Lenders were changing their policies every couple of weeks, and sort of playing that dance over and over again," Richardson told Australian Broker. "As a broker, if you're accredited with 30 lenders, you're getting inundated with five to 10 emails a day from different lender updates, whether it's across policy or different changes. Trying to stay across all of that and then deliver the best guidance to clients as you can becomes exceptionally difficult."
That's when Richardson realized there was a gap in the market. And the timing couldn't have been better. ChatGBT was ramping up, and would eventually be released to the public in 2022.
"I had a very naive thought that surely, well, I've got all this policy data and AI can do everything. So we should just be able to mash them together and I can create my own assistant in six weeks and we'll be good to go," Richardson said.
He quickly teamed up with Lewis and a silent investor to launch Cynario — pronounced "Scenario AI." Two years later the fintech company was born.
But Richardson — who serves as chief executive officer and co-founder of the firm, while Lewis takes on the role of chief technology officer, in addition to co-founder — said it was worth the wait.
He described Cynario as "exceptionally easy to use."
"What we've built is for a broker," he said. "We've got all the lender policy data, which gets updated in real time, and a broker at any point can go in and ask questions. The idea being that a broker can go into the platform and say, 'I have a doctor who wants to refinance. Which lenders will offer me an LMI waiver at 95%?' And from there, the AI assistant will go off, compare and analyze all the lender policies and the data set, and then come back within under a second with a full list of all relevant lenders that would be able to assist.
"It's really a policy guidance tool to significantly enhance the efficiencies and remove barriers. So brokers don't have to go into every individual broker club, or lender portal, checking policies, checking their emails for updates, because everything's up to date in real time on Cynario," he said. "It's like having a policy assistance that works 24/7 for you."
Subscriptions start at $59.95 a month for a single user, and increase depending on the number of users. The price includes a weekly AI-generated podcast that highlights lender policy updates.
Subscribers also have access to two AI assistants: Charli, an expert in residential policies; and Alex, a marketing assistant that specializes in things like writing emails and social media posts.
Plans for other assistants are also currently in development, Richardson said, including one for the commercial space and one for asset finance. In addition, the firm plans to offer two lender solutions in the future: one for lenders and lender BDMs called Cynario Edge, as well as Cynario Fault, a white label version that will sit within each lenders' broker portal.
