Practical thinking on AI
for business leaders

The MFAA published the first industry-level clawback measure in September 2026, putting median reported gross clawback at $11,442 per broker. That is about 9 per cent of upfront revenue, earned and banked, then taken back. Every clawback is preceded by a signal already sitting in the CRM.

Australian brokers settled 92.06 per cent of the applications they lodged in 2025, down a full point in a year. On a 600-application brokerage that slip costs ~$36,000 a year, and the fix sits before submission, not after approval.

KPMG found 43.8 per cent of Australian construction leaders have adopted AI at scale, almost twice the global rate, yet fewer of them expect productivity to improve. The tools landed in the office whilst the constraint sits on site, and the fix starts with a stopwatch rather than another platform.

McKinsey found time savings exceeding 30 per cent on maintenance tasks from agentic AI. On a 600 property rent roll that is roughly 54 doors of capacity, worth about $142,000 a year in fees with no additional salary attached.

Australian teams are saving real hours with AI and almost none of it is reaching earnings. The difference between the two is a management decision about where the hours go, and a worked calculation shows what an unallocated year costs a 20-person business.

Loan approval times for LMG brokers fell 18 per cent in a year, on the back of 3,800 brokers using AI checking tools. The gain is administrative, it is measurable per file, and it arrives with a 10 December compliance date attached.

Australian brokers spend 11 per cent of their time educating and preparing each client. The other 89 per cent is process, and open banking data import already takes 90 minutes out of every loan file.

The RCSA Industry Census found 39% of ANZ recruitment professionals already use AI for process automation. On 10 December 2026 that use has to be written down. The obligation changes the paperwork, not the permission.

McKinsey estimates AI could automate 39 per cent of non-physical work in construction. For an Australian builder that is estimating, contract review and variations, which is exactly where margin is won and lost.

Less than a quarter of Australian construction businesses have a technology strategy. The builders compressing their quoting workflow are winning more work before price even matters.

Morgan Stanley projects $34 billion in efficiency gains for real estate from AI by 2030. The agencies realising those gains aren't doing anything exotic. The agencies moving now are building cost structures their competitors can't match.

Broker market share reached a record 81% in the March 2026 quarter, with $124.88 billion settled, the highest for any March quarter. But pre-approval to settlement conversion has dropped nearly 20 points in three years. The gap is mostly operational.

Senior performers aren't hired fully formed. They're built through the volume work AI now absorbs. Remove the bottom rung and the leadership pipeline quietly breaks.

Korn Ferry platform data shows AI-assisted sourcing cuts interview wait times by 66% and increases candidate volume by 50%. Faster shortlists mean faster billings.

APAC agencies using AI are 3 to 5 times more likely to have grown revenue in 2025. The revenue gap between adopters and non-adopters is widening fast.

Top APAC agencies using AI place candidates in 1–3 days. Those that aren't average 7–10. In a market where speed wins mandates, that gap is a revenue problem.