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Speaking on Broker Daily’s Business Accelerator podcast, broker coach and Broker Essentials founder Jason Back said many brokers often misunderstand what innovation actually means, reducing it solely to fast adoption of technology rather than broader improvements to processes, service delivery, and client experience.
“I think most brokers probably misunderstand what innovation is, and I think we’ve gone down such a rabbit hole with technology that we’ve forgotten that innovation is also about process innovation, service innovation, people innovation, marketing innovation,” Back said.
“It’s not just new tech – but how you use it.”
According to Back, the increasing accessibility of information means brokers need to think differently about how they create value.
“I was talking with an aggregator CEO there about the fact that I feel like now knowledge really isn’t the main game anymore because it’s freely available and with things like large language models, the ability to ask questions and get amazing responses, the next level of innovation is really going to be in imagination,” Back said.
A culture of curiosity
While innovation is often associated with top-down major technological breakthroughs, Back said that some of the most valuable ideas come from paying attention to inefficiencies, client frustrations, and opportunities both inside and outside the broking industry.
“Good ideas actually come from all over the place,” he said.
“They come from your clients, your staff and your team members. They definitely come from other industries, of course, they come from your competitors. And they come from things like data and the bottlenecks that you find actually in your day-to-day business.”
Rather than waiting for lenders, aggregators, or technology providers to drive change, Back encouraged brokers to actively seek inspiration from the broking world around them and the tools available.
Back also said that some of the best ideas often emerge from frontline staff rather than senior leadership teams.
“Your people will tell you where there’s opportunities in the business to make change. They’ll tell you what’s not working, where the bottlenecks are,” he said.
Turning ideas into action
While brokers are certainly not short of big ideas as to how they can change their business and the industry, Back said the bigger challenge is usually execution.
“Most brokers generally don’t have an innovation problem, they’ve actually got an implementation problem,” he said.
“It’s not lack of information, nor feedback from the things that are going right or wrong that inspire us to change. It’s the ability to take that knowledge, that opportunity, that experience, and then turn it into something practical.”
According to Back, brokers should carefully assess whether a solution already exists before investing significant time and money in developing something themselves.
“I’d be assessing the current landscape. Does a solution to this problem already exist? Can I go and get it for 20 bucks off the shelf as a subscription? What have I seen work out in the market?” he said.
Back also warned against overcomplicating the process of change, encouraging brokers to focus on practical outcomes and manageable improvements.
“Sometimes we’ve just got to remember that the beauty of being small businesses is that they can be really agile. So the old test and learn mentality, poke around, play, be curious – it’s exciting,” Back said.
Technology changing the equation
While Back cautioned against treating technology as the answer to every problem, he said that AI and automation are likely to have a profound impact on how brokerages operate over the coming years.
In particular, he pointed to growing connectivity between systems, advances in automation, and the emergence of agentic AI as developments that could significantly improve efficiency across the broking process.
“The big innovation, and there are some aggregators out there at the moment that are making really big moves in this area, is really the API side of things. The ability for other technologies to talk to the core technology is sort of really where the main game is going to be in the coming six and 12 months,” Back said.
“And obviously with moving further away from the large language model, that narrow or generative AI, moving that into the agentic AI piece, that will again be the next big play.”
However, Back said technology should be viewed as an enabler rather than a destination in itself.
“Less is more. There are lots of products out there that you’d be surprised what they can do. You don’t need another product just to double down,” he said.
Instead, Back said that the brokers who benefit most from emerging technologies will be those willing to experiment, adapt, and reassess the way they work.
Celebrating innovation
Back will be hosting this year’s Broker Innovation Summit, where attendees will be challenged to rethink their approach to AI.
Hosted by Broker Daily, the summit will bring together some of the industry’s leading thinkers to examine the technologies, strategies, and trends set to define the next era of broking.
The one-day summit will take place in Sydney on 24 June and Melbourne on 3 July.
For more information, including speakers and agenda details, click here.
The Sydney summit will be followed up by the Broker Innovation Awards at Ilumina, Sydney, on Wednesday, 24 June 2026.
Find out more and buy tickets for the awards here.
[Related: AI is racing ahead – are brokerages keeping up?]
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