Guardian: an AI home loan companion, from first idea to launch

Lendi Group, the business behind Lendi and Aussie, created Project Aurora to build an AI-native home loan businessLendi Group’s Project Aurora bets big on an agentic AI-led mortgage marketRead on Mi3. The team started with refinancing: helping customers understand their loan, consider their options and continue with a broker. That meant designing a new customer product, and how brokers and operations would support it.

Lendi Guardian is the result: an AI home loan companion that brings a customer’s property and loan together with an AI conversation and a broker. Its agent answers with more than text: loan options side by side, short forms, property values and a time to book, or simply a clear sentence when that’s the most useful reply. Rate Radar watches the loan for potential savings, and a broker stays available for personal advice. The app, website, conversation, product site and App Store listing launched together in a matter of monthsHow Lendi Group accelerated deployment 4x and launched a new AI product in 14 weeksRead on Magic Patterns.

I led the end-to-end experience across customers, brokers and operations: research, product direction, conversation design, interfaces, the broker handoff, brand and the shared design foundations. IT BriefBig AI moves at Lendi Group, brokers and customers benefitRead on IT Brief later described the first build: a small team with a single designer, and that designer was me.

I ran the workshops that decided which customer problems to tackle next, and took customer findings into board and advisory-panel reviews. Guardian’s continued growth, now also in Aussie, is part of my Principal role.

Once Guardian was live, more people were coming in, but the opening conversation pushed them towards refinancing before they’d had a chance to ask questions and understand their position. I helped change the conversation and the interface together, giving people room to explore and a clear way to continue, and we judged progress through the journey rather than counting a chat as success.

Concepts could be generated and in front of customers within a day. After launch, features shipped daily and the agent was updated several times a day. Aurora went on to win AI Innovator in Mortgage Broking at the 2025 Australian AI AwardsAustralian AI Awards 2025: winners revealedRead on The Adviser.