Building an AI Agent for Underwriter Decisioning in 6 Days
At VIP Apps Consulting, our approach is built on three core principles: Value, Innovation, and Process. These principles guide everything we do, whether we’re advising on Enterprise solutions or turning innovative ideas into real outcomes. Our team has decades of experience in Asset Finance, Lending, and Leasing, which gives us a deep understanding of the industry.
Recently, we were invited to demonstrate the potential of AI in Lending as part of a global Salesforce Digital Lending partner webinar. This was an opportunity to showcase our knowledge on using out-of-box features, low-code, and no-code tools to drive innovation quickly. The aim was to help an Underwriter make better, faster, and more informed decisions.
Across Financial Services and in Lending, the role of the Underwriter is fundamental. They assess risk, ensure compliance, and ultimately decide whether a loan gets approved or rejected. It’s a critical role, and it’s built on years of human experience. As loan volumes grow and regulatory pressure increases, it’s clear that the underwriting process needs to evolve with automation and augmentation. AI agents can help underwriters by providing useful data and context, and if implemented right, the final decision always stays with the human.
The AI agent we built helps with summarising key data from multiple sources, like company verification from UK Companies House and real-time Credit Score data. The underwriter can ask the Agent questions, and it will provide insights based on what it’s learned. It can even help with document analysis, flagging missing information or inconsistencies, and suggests alternative loan products based on the applicant’s profile.
What’s more, the AI agent provides decision assistance by helping to identify potential red flags, such as issues from AML/KYC checks. The Underwriter can review the data, ask questions, and get helpful and insightful recommendations without having to dig through endless documents and reports.
By leveraging low-code and no-code solutions, reusable templates, and smart configuration, we could quickly assemble the key components without costly development. Salesforce’s Financial Services Cloud, with its out-of-box data models and business rules, was the perfect foundation. We also used Einstein AI and Agentforce to provide intelligent decisioning.
Here’s how we broke it down:
- Platform Foundation – We used low-code and no-code tools to get things up and running quickly. No need to build everything from scratch. The Salesforce platform provided everything we needed to get started, and we focused on configuring what was already there.
- AI Experience – We designed the prompts for the AI so that it could answer the underwriter’s questions and offer useful insights in a way that made sense to them. This wasn’t about making the AI smart in every area; it was about making sure it could give the right answers at the right time.
- AI Guardrails and Controls – AI can be daunting, especially in something as important as underwriting. That’s why we put in safeguards. We made sure the AI stayed within bounded knowledge areas, so it wouldn’t overstep. We also built in confidence scores and audit trails to ensure that the underwriter could always see why the AI made a certain suggestion. Transparency and explainability were key.
- Human-first design – The AI agent had to fit seamlessly into the underwriter’s workflow. We didn’t want to add complexity. So, we designed the interfaces to be clean and simple, ensuring that the underwriter could trust the AI and make informed decisions quickly.
Looking ahead, we see even more opportunities to build on this POC, like AI document verification, better fraud detection, and more advanced decision-making features. As the technology continues to evolve, we’ll be able to offer even more sophisticated AI agents for different types of lending.
At VIP Apps Consulting, we’re proud to combine real-world knowledge with modern technology. Our approach is grounded in Value, Innovation, and Process and is about helping organisations make meaningful, practical changes that deliver real value.
If you’re exploring AI in Underwriting, or if you’d like to learn more about how AI can augment your lending processes, get in touch. more about how AI can augment your lending processes, get in touch.
