Herman Verdoodt, a 57-year-old credit analyst at Belgian mortgage underwriter Creafin, now shares his name with an AI system handling €500m in annual business. The software, created by fintech company Oper, automates data checking that once consumed hours of manual work. Colleagues joke about the 'real Herman' versus the artificial one, though both rely heavily on coffee to function.

Verdoodt represents an aging workforce in credit analysis, where three of his ten team members are over 60. He describes the job as administrative drudgery: imagine a cook who only cooks 15-20% of the time. The AI handles routine data verification in minutes, flagging errors that previously sank entire evaluations. This shift reflects broader trends in financial services automation.

Despite having an AI namesake, Verdoodt remains pragmatic about his workload. He expects faster client responses will simply generate more loan requests, keeping days equally long. His perspective matters because mortgage decisions involve life-changing sums—€320k purchases with 25-year repayment terms. Human judgment remains essential, he argues, since clients are people making human decisions.

The story illustrates how AI adoption in financial services isn't just about efficiency gains, but about preserving institutional knowledge while automating repetitive tasks. Verdoodt plans to retire at 63, fully expecting Herman AI to evolve into something else entirely within a few years.