3 days ago
Exclusive: How Afterburner's AI speeds up mortgage advice & frees up advisors
Afterburner, a New Zealand-based fintech startup, is putting the power of AI into the hands of mortgage advisors, by reducing admin-heavy tasks from hours to just seconds.
"Advisors don't enjoy typing out forms or writing up credit memos," explained Geoff Christopher, one of Afterburner's three co-founders. "They enjoy having those meaningful, value-add conversations with clients. So we're building tools to help them do just that."
Afterburner was spun out of Float Financial, a mortgage advisory firm co-founded by Christopher and Naylon Cassidy. The third co-founder, Jacob Muñoz, joined the business originally as a customer experience hire - but quickly revealed himself to be a skilled software engineer.
"Jacob automated his role within a month," Christopher said. "Then he just kept going, building tools to solve the pain points we face every day as advisors."
The idea for Afterburner emerged organically. The tools Muñoz developed for internal use at Float caught the attention of other financial advisory firms.
"We'd show other advisors what we were using, and they'd say, 'This would be incredible if we could use it too.' So that's when we realised we should build it out as a SaaS product," Christopher explained.
Unlike generic fintech tools that offer broad solutions, Afterburner is specifically tailored to mortgage advisors.
"We're not building features in a vacuum," he said. "Jacob sits next to a team of 14 financial advisors, and he's solving real problems in real time."
The first generation of Afterburner tools focuses on streamlining repetitive tasks. These include calculating borrowing capacity across multiple banks, generating credit memorandums, summarising client interviews from recorded calls, and translating complex lender approval letters into simple, client-friendly summaries.
"These are tasks that would normally take 10 to 20 minutes - or even longer," Christopher said. "Now, they're done in seconds."
The second generation of tools, currently in beta testing, goes even further. "You can feed in every document for a mortgage application, and Afterburner will write up the entire thing," he said. "It cross-references everything - bank statements, declared expenses, KiwiSaver balances, credit cards - and highlights discrepancies just like a seasoned banker would."
The platform also drafts follow-up questions, responds to bank queries, and even pre-fills complex forms like bank handovers and account onboarding paperwork. "We've automated about 95% of the repetitive workload," Christopher added.
This has allowed Float Financial to grow from 10 to 15 staff since January, with most of the team made up of advisors rather than support roles.
"We've eliminated so much admin, we don't need a big back-office team," he said.
"In fact, one of our support staff is now training to become an advisor. That's the kind of professional growth we want to enable."
Afterburner co-founders Naylon Cassidy, Geoff Christopher and Jacob Muñoz.
When asked about compliance and data privacy, Christopher said the platform is fully encrypted and undergoing ISO 27001 certification.
"We take security and compliance incredibly seriously. Financial advisors using Afterburner must have clients sign privacy declarations, and we ensure data is only used for authorised purposes."
Afterburner's impact is being felt not just at Float but across the growing number of advisory firms adopting the platform.
"The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive," said Christopher. "When we demo the next-gen tools, advisors say, 'When can I have this?' They're excited - it's a huge leap in productivity."
Despite the power of AI, Christopher was quick to emphasise the continued importance of human connection.
"Most people still want to talk to a real person when they're making big financial decisions," he said. "It's about trust, and AI can't replicate that."
Looking ahead, Afterburner is eyeing expansion. Its AI-powered approach could be applied well beyond mortgages.
"We've already built tools for personal insurance, KiwiSaver, and investment advice," Christopher said. "And we're talking to accountants too - imagine automating tax returns and financial reports in the same way."
The team is also in discussions with large Australian aggregators, which could open the door to international markets. "With insurance and accountancy, the fundamentals are global," he noted.
As for the pace of innovation, Christopher admitted it's moving fast - even for the founders.
"It's crazy to think how far we've come with just the first generation of tools. The next phase? It's like 5x to 10x better," he said.
"And we're not rocket scientists," he added. "There are smarter people out there doing amazing things too."
"But for us, it's all about solving real problems for real people. That's what keeps us going."
