Loan Market Group embeds AI into daily HR work - and stops treating it as a novelty
Hannah Timcke, head of HR at mortgage brokerage network Loan Market Group, has moved the company past AI experimentation to everyday use across recruitment, workforce planning and role design.
The shift happened in months. When Timcke won an HR award last year, generative AI was mostly discussion. Now it sits inside payroll reporting, contract drafting, performance management and training design.
"I use it all day, every day," Timcke said. Managers draft performance discussions with AI and send them to HR for review, cutting hours of back-and-forth that used to happen manually.
Culture and time, not just software
Loan Market Group runs on Google and rolled out Gemini enterprise-wide. But Timcke says the real difference is not the platform - it's the culture.
Every Friday, the entire business participates in "AI hour of power" to experiment, solve real problems and share wins and failures. An active Slack channel lets staff post ideas and use cases. Employees have access to major AI tools and curated learning through LinkedIn Learning and an internal education team called Brokerversity.
"The business is really invested in giving our people time to do that and encouraging them to share wins, losses, learnings across our whole group," Timcke said.
Leaders are expected to use AI as a coach and tool. That expectation is now built into how the company hires.
Recruitment now screens for AI curiosity
Loan Market Group is not demanding advanced AI skills yet. Instead, job descriptions now explicitly look for "AI curiosity" - comfort experimenting, willingness to find better ways of working.
Timcke pointed to a current vacancy for an HR business partner in Melbourne where AI curiosity appears in the position description. One of her own performance targets is embedding AI across the business.
"None of us are experts, we're all still learning," she said. "But it's absolutely something that is not going anywhere. If you've got someone that's really comfortable to have a play with that and really curious about what it can offer, that's a really valuable skill set."
Over time, the company expects to move from hiring for curiosity to hiring for defined AI skills.
Role design and workforce planning reshape
Timcke sees AI forcing fundamental questions about how work gets structured. Traditional boundaries between tech roles and other positions are blurring.
"Everyone really has a hand in doing some of that now with AI," she said. "What you relied on other people for previously, you can now do a lot more yourself."
That affects workforce planning directly. As AI capabilities grow, HR must understand what skills the business will need and recruit accordingly. Reskilling existing staff becomes critical.
For a financial services company, security adds another layer. Loan Market Group handles personal information, so staying "at the top of our game with our security" is non-negotiable, Timcke said.
The pace leaves no room for debate
Timcke is direct about what the speed of change means for HR leaders. "The horse has bolted and if you're not on it, you're behind - and even if you are on it, you're already behind."
She suggests HR priorities should shift from debating whether to use AI to:
- Creating safe, enterprise-grade access so people can experiment without risk
- Carving out protected time - like AI hour of power - so AI work is not an afterthought
- Hiring and developing for curiosity now, with a path to clearer AI proficiency expectations later
- Rethinking role design and workforce plans with AI in mind, not as an add-on
"It's freeing our people up to definitely spend their time on the value-add stuff and less of the administrative manual work that historically we've had to do," Timcke added.
Learn more: AI for CHROs (Chief Human Resources Officers) covers practical implementation for senior HR leaders, or explore AI for Human Resources for broader HR applications including recruitment and workforce analytics.
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