'The strongest applications of AI will augment people rather than simply replace human interaction': Steve Burnard, Bath BS

FR: Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at Bath Building Society

I joined the Society to set up the business transformation team five years ago. My background is in financial services, with a particular focus on strategy development, change, operations and using technology to deliver improvements for customers and colleagues. 

As chief digital officer, I’m responsible for leading the Society’s digital transformation. For me, that isn’t just about introducing new technology, but bringing together people, processes and technology to make it easier for customers and brokers to do business with us, while giving our colleagues the tools they need to deliver the personal service we’re known for. As a building society it’s key for us to introduce digital technology without losing the human service and flexibility. 

FR: Last year, you announced the appointment of One Mortgage System (OMS) and the adoption of their cloud-based lending origination platform to streamline your application-to-completion mortgage operation for both brokers and direct customers. What lead you to their appointment and what were the challenges you were seeking to address?

Our starting point was to look at how we make the mortgage journey easier and more efficient without losing the personal underwriting approach that is such an important part of our offer. We wanted to automate the things that technology can do well, so our team have more time to add value where their experience and judgement can really help. 

As a specialist lender, we often help customers whose circumstances don’t fit neatly into a standard box. This means technology needs to support our team, rather than constrain them. 

The partnership with OMS has given us the opportunity to modernise our complete mortgage journey. Key for us was to reduce manual processes, improve data accessibility and allow customers to check the progress of their mortgage application at any stage. 

The OMS cloud based platform allows us to deliver greater automation and transparency while supporting the Society’s plans for sustainable growth. 

FR: What will the resulting implementation mean for brokers and their customers when submitting cases to Bath Building Society?

Ultimately, we want it to mean a simpler, quicker and more transparent experience.

The first phase of our new lending origination platform has now gone live, which is an important milestone for the Society and delivers a greater experience for direct applications. Phase two will introduce online mortgage applications for brokers and represents the next step in improving the broker journey by making it easier to do business with us, with less friction and a clearer journey when submitting and progressing cases. For their customers, that should translate into a smoother process and faster progress through an application.

But speed isn’t the only measure of good service. By also removing unnecessary administration from the process, our team can concentrate on the cases where a conversation, expertise or individual assessment can really make a difference.

FR: What part does technology play in the Society’s overall strategy and how is AI shaping your strategy?

Our objective is to grow sustainably while continuing to provide the distinctive, personal service our members and intermediary partners value. Digital technology helps us to do that by simplifying processes, making better use of data and enabling colleagues to spend more of their time on high-value activity. The OMS platform is a good example of technology being used to improve efficiency while preserving personal underwriting and service.

AI is clearly going to play an increasingly important role, but we’re taking a considered approach. We will look to AI in areas where it can genuinely improve the experience for our members, brokers and colleagues and not just deploy AI for the sake of it.

There are opportunities to use AI to support productivity, make information easier to access and help colleagues make better use of the data available to them. But financial services is built on trust, so appropriate governance, security and human oversight have to sit alongside innovation. My view is that the strongest applications of AI will augment people rather than simply replace human interaction.

FR: Looking forward to 2027, what else can we expect from the Society in terms of digital transformation?

I see 2027 as a year when more of the foundations we’ve been putting in place start to translate into visible benefits for our members, brokers and colleagues.

The mortgage transformation will remain an important part of that journey. More broadly, our focus will continue to be on joining up our technology, processes and data, reducing unnecessary manual activity and making our services easier to access and use.

What’s exciting is that digital transformation gives a Society of our size the opportunity to combine the best of both worlds. We can offer the convenience and efficiency people increasingly expect, while retaining the personal approach and specialist thinking that make Bath Building Society different. Not digital for digital’s sake but using technology intelligently to make Bath an even better Society to do business with.