Distributors have put an increased emphasis on technological systems since the pandemic
The importance of technology saw a drastic spike as a result of the pandemic, leading many distributors to put increased emphasis on their technological systems and processes.
John Scrivens (pictured), intermediary lead at Skipton Building Society for Intermediaries, said the lender invested heavily in its technological offerings during the pandemic, with its updated processes still continuing to benefit it today.
Technological strategy
“One of our key strategic priorities is to be powered by digital technology and data without losing our human touch,” Scrivens said.
He added that Skipton had already invested in this prior to the pandemic, with the lender reaping the rewards during a successful 2022.
Scrivens said this was achieved by striking the right balance within the firm’s operation between technology and its underwriting team. He said the lender now uses electronic ID&V, an automated identification and address verification service, and Automatic Income Verification (AIV), an automatic income verification service which is carried out on employed applicants.
Scrivens added the firm allows single key applications through its integration with the Twenty7Tec sourcing platform.
“Twenty7Tec supports an estimated one third market share, which enables brokers to capture their client’s data, source a suitable product and apply directly to our E-mortgages system, improving the broker experience,” Scrivens said.
He noted the lender also performs an Automatic Valuation Model (AVM) through Rightmove, provides mortgage offers within one day where customers pass EID&V AIV, and allows for paperless mortgage offers.
Performance
In 2022, Scrivens said 57% of borrowers passed Automatic Income Verification, 22% of all offers in were issued within five days, and 32% of applications used an AVM.
“On fully packaged applications our average time to underwrite was 2.5 days, our average time to offer on cases with an AVM was 7.1 days, and, overall, our average time to offer in 2022 was 10.8 days,” he added.
Scrivens said the pandemic did not change Skipton’s stance on its technology strategy, however it encouraged the lender to invest more heavily in this area.
“Yes our BDM team were interacting with brokers via video meetings instead of face to face, and now 60% of all our appointments are face to face and 40% largely video, but regarding our automation processes, we have kept to the script,” he said.
Scrivens said that while the lender implemented a number of new technologies during the height of COVID, which it intends to continue utilising post pandemic, he added that Skipton plans to also continue to have a human-based approach to underwriting.
More to be done
“Over the years, we have received feedback from brokers regarding the amount of duplication in the mortgage process for both clients and brokers,” he said.
Scrivens added that the evolution of API integrations in recent times has gone a large way to removing some of this duplication, but he believes there is still work to do regarding creating greater adoption by brokers.
API integrations are designed largely to remove the need for brokers or their administrative teams to rekey data from one source to another.
“Where a broker has the digital capability to plug their CRM system into a sourcing system then we see the biggest gain,” Scrivens said.
He said that this removes the need for any rekeying outside of the broker’s sales process, and added that all brokers need to do is simply press a button to send this captured data to a lender.
“This is where we have seen our biggest successes to date for adoption; unfortunately though this industry has a complicated web of systems and a lot of them legacy ones,” Scrivens added.
In short, Scrivens does believe lender API adoption will increase, but currently, he said it is at a slower pace than he would have expected a couple of years ago.
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