LIZ SYMS
AI Expert for Advisers
Liz Syms is the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Connect Mortgages and Connect for Intermediaries, bringing over 25 years of expertise in mortgage and financial advice. Liz leads a dynamic team of more than 60 staff, specialising particularly in complex and specialist mortgages. In 2012, Liz established an award-winning Mortgage Network, now supporting over 350 advisers operating across mainstream and specialist markets, including complex buy-to-let, commercial, bridging, and development finance.
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Passionate about innovation, Liz champions technology and AI advancements to streamline mortgage processes and enhance adviser productivity. She dedicates significant time to developing and delivering training content, emphasising technology-driven solutions from the adviser’s viewpoint and recently co-founded mortgagelab.ai, a destination for everything AI in mortgages.
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Additionally, Liz serves as Chair of the Society of Mortgage Professionals and as a board adviser for the Financial Intermediary and Broker Association (FIBA). She authored the Buy-to-Let module of the LIBF accreditation “The Certified Practitioner in Specialist Property Finance” and collaborated with FIBA and LIBF to introduce this groundbreaking qualification to the specialist market.
PAUL BRETT
AI Expert for Lenders
Paul Brett, Founder of BTD Consult and Coach and MortgageLab.AI
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Paul has spent nearly four decades in the UK mortgage industry. He has built and run lending and distribution businesses across first charge, second charge and buy to let.
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Today he leads BTS Consult & Coach, working with boards, founders and leadership
teams on strategy, distribution and growth.
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He is a co-founder of Mortgage Lab.ai, the official AI Knowledge Partner for MIT Live and a practical resource for mortgage professionals who want to use AI rather than talk about it. He also hosts the
Mortgage Mingle podcast.
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Much of Paul’s work now sits where mortgages meet technology, and he is unapologetically enthusiastic about it. He describes AI as a great leveller, and the levelling he has in mind is a practical one. A firm can now get its data into order and build processes and tools shaped around the way it actually works, rather than bending itself to fit generic software. That is a genuine gain in productivity, for
individuals and whole businesses and it is as available to a sole trader as it is to a large corporation.
MIKE POTTS
AI Web Design Expert
Co-founder, Technical Adviser and Designer at mortgagelab.ai
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30 Year Photoshop Pro.
30 Year Web Design Pro.
30 Year Graphic Design Pro (Clients include: Harrods, Hamleys, English Heritage, Royal Scotland, RNLI).
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Vehicle Mechanic.
ex-Royal Navy Nuclear Submariner.
Mechanical and Nuclear engineer.
Vehicle Graphics Specialist.
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Avid biker and the current custodian of a 97 year old 1929 Matchless T4, and building a custom 1977 cg125.
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Lifelong fan of AI, from the 2000AD comic books of the early 80’s.
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40+ year collector of tools.
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If I want to know how it works, I will learn it. If it’s broken, I can fix it.
REBECCA WHITNEY
AI Business Expert
Rebecca is the (fractional) Chief Intelligence Officer at Connect Mortgages, co-founder of MortgageLab.ai, and founder of Advisory 9, an AI implementation company.
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She brings more than 30 years of experience in marketing, operations, and AI-driven business transformation, including a leadership role building a patented patient-finding technology in healthcare and scaling a company from $12 million to nearly $100 million in under five years.
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Through Advisory 9 and Mortgage Lab, she teaches AI fluency with business growth in mind with AI strategy and implementation across the customer journey.