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Mortgage broking is not the sort of business where revolutions are expected. Yet David Hyman, Lendi Group CEO is rapidly building one. With Project Aurora, his firm plans to replace much of the mortgage grind with agentic AI. That will see digital brokers that work around the clock, humans managing agents, and even agents managing their human counterparts, at least as coaches. The aim is not to cull jobs, but to rewire them: people for trust and complexity, machines for speed and scale. Meanwhile, Chief Technology Officer, Devesh Maheshwari sees the absence of any mature scaffolding in the current agentic AI ecosystem as an opportunity. It forces the team to design for resilience from day one, and creates room for innovators to set the bar for how Agentic AI should operate securely, transparently, and at enterprise scale. By mid-2026, if their plan works, the home loan could become less a paper chase and more a precision-engineered service, one where the busiest worker in the room isn’t human.

Co-owner of family run Springhill Farms, Fiona Whatley, isn’t afraid of being real, nor does she shy away from fessing up to several marketing mistakes as she strives to build a stronger brand narrative for the Aussie snacking manufacturer’s growing better-for-you product offering. Armed with a product offering that taps into two key growing consumer trends – healthier snacking and the wellbeing movement – the business is in a good place to keep growing if it can stick to its newly homed strategy and longer-standing authenticity, she tells Mi3. As to executing that strategy, there’s everything from prioritising food-in-mouth experiences, formalising the avatar of Springhill’s target customer, Sarah, rethinking product identity and packaging, and engaging influencers, fractional CMOs, agencies and product strategists on the table.

Six years on from the start of Australia’s Privacy Act overhaul and there’s still room to send the industry scattering and cast doubt on what will actually land. The Productivity Commission is the latest to throw a curveball on where things may be headed, proposing a fresh ‘dual-track’ privacy compliance approach for businesses in its interim Harnessing data and digital technology report this week. It’s not the only controversial thing in there: Less redtape around AI, rethinking copyright infringement for feeding the robots and an immediate halt on guardrails for high-risk AI use cases are also in the recommendations list, along with more data accessibility overall. Data Synergies’ Peter Leonard sees the privacy take as an example of how privacy reform isn’t really being dictated by consumer privacy needs but by bigger government concerns. While the choice of outcomes-based approaches to using consumer data will appeal to digital marketers, he also warns the flip is even more stringent alternatives from the Privacy Commissioner. ADMA’s Andrea Martens points out how privacy progress has “stalled” over the last 18 months, and hopes these latest recommendations will be a “circuit breaker to the unproductive privacy versus business debate”. Civic Data’s Chris Brinkworth meanwhile, says the Productivity Commission’s modus operandi is less about privacy and more about the internationally competitive product and AI race Australia must face.