The making of SmartAccept: how adviser feedback and AI shaped our latest innovation
A sit-down with the team behind the first AI-powered tool, SmartAccept, for the Unbiased Pro platform.
SmartAccept addresses advisers’ challenges around missing out on valuable enquiries when they’re offline and the knock-on effect it has on their business and personal lives.
The first-of-its-kind feature uses machine learning to understand each firm’s lead preferences and automatically accepts matching enquiries out of hours.
Giving advisers back time and helping them de-stress was central to the development of SmartAccept.
It is the first of the intelligent tools Unbiased is building to help the financial advice industry thrive in a new era.
Why we built SmartAccept
The team behind Unbiased Pro regularly speaks with advisers on the platform to understand the key challenges they face and what they can do to continue helping unlock business growth.
SmartAccept, was born from this feedback. It directly addresses one of the biggest challenges that advisers face: missing the right clients.
According to Katy Francis, senior product manager at Unbiased:
“We listened to our customers and found that a major pain was manually having to accept enquiries and missing enquiries when unavailable.”
Specifically, the emotion of this challenge struck a chord with the team.
Advisers revealed that they were missing out on spending time with their families due to the distraction of having to check their devices to ensure they didn’t miss a lead.
Faced with this challenge, the team identified ways to solve the problem, with their vision being to ‘give advisers back time, where they can close their laptops out of hours and de-stress from the fear of missing out on Unbiased enquiries.’
From feedback to feature: The process behind building SmartAccept
Building SmartAccept began with adviser feedback.
As Alex Devane, product designer at Unbiased, puts it:
“Our customers told us they felt they could never switch off from Unbiased Pro.
“When they did, they missed out on opportunities. In a competitive market, they felt pressure to always be ‘on.’ We decided this was a problem worth solving.”
Through a series of workshops and using the advanced tools and technologies at their disposal, the team built the first SmartAccept model.
This was then put to the test with a group of pilot customers, including both financial advisers and mortgage brokers, who tested the model and provided invaluable feedback.
This feedback allowed the team to gain confidence in the model and understand how to adapt and personalise the experience for customers going forward.
The finished feature has undergone several iterations to ensure it provides a solution to the challenges advisers face, representing months of dedicated work by the wider Unbiased Pro team.
According to Francis, SmartAccept came together through “real adviser stories about missed opportunities, our team’s AI expertise, and countless iterations to get it right. The result is a feature that works quietly in the background but makes a real difference to how advisers run their business.”
How SmartAccept works
SmartAccept automatically accepts the enquiries you want when you can’t be online, so you win more valuable prospects with less effort.
As put by Iain Thomson, chief product officer at Unbiased:
“SmartAccept uses machine learning to understand each firm’s lead preferences and automatically accepts matching enquiries out of hours, when great prospects might otherwise be missed.
“We wanted to help advisers get more of the right enquiries with less manual admin, giving them back time and helping them grow even when offline.”
The feature works outside of advisers’ usual working hours: evenings, weekends, and bank holidays.
This means when advisers come back online, they have accepted enquiries ready and waiting to be contacted, so there are no opportunities missed.
The tool is currently available in beta on an invitation-only basis to UK-based financial advisers and mortgage brokers and is expected to be more widely available from January 2026.
What it means for advisers
The financial advice industry is facing increasing competition for prospects.
The pool of high-value consumers is shrinking, and costs are rising. SmartAccept helps advisers act faster and capture more of the right opportunities.
It also helps bridge the AI gap in financial advice.
Research from Unbiased revealed that advisers listed AI and automation as their biggest upcoming challenge, with 56% of advisers also believing it has the potential to support their business in the future. But, despite this 61% haven’t started using AI at all.
SmartAccept is a step in the right direction, delivering on the promise AI holds in financial advice.
Alongside strong growth opportunities and a leap forward in AI usage, the first-of-its-kind feature means less manual admin for advisers, giving them back time to focus not only on the work that matters but also on their personal time outside of work.
Advisers can continue to work towards their growth targets without checking their devices during dinner or risk losing valuable leads while they sleep.
What’s next?
SmartAccept is the first tool to launch from the Unbiased Pro AI platform.
This platform utilises machine learning and the depth of insight Unbiased holds around financial advice to securely analyse patterns across its network of 27,000 advisers and 10 million annual visitors, ensuring prospective clients are better connected to the needs of advisers.
SmartAccept is the first of the intelligent tools Unbiased is building to help the financial advice industry thrive in a new era.
SmartAccept is currently available in beta on an invitation-only basis to UK-based financial advisers and mortgage brokers, with wider availability expected from January 2026.
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