While e-commerce has greatly speeded up and improved the approvals process for intermediaries and their clients, the industry has built up a range of competing options that can add complications, rather than remove them. With lenders, packagers, networks and sourcing systems setting up their own ways of doing business, problems of compatibility have helped create barriers to giving a really smooth application process.
That’s not one company’s fault, of course, but has simply been a by-product of the rival systems being set up within the mortgage industry to give companies a perceived competitive edge. But rather than providing some kind of online unique service proposition, the current competing e-commerce systems are, effectively, giving brokers a real headache.
Embracing the benefits
As lenders, our approach should be to embrace the benefits of e-commerce for the good of our customers, rather than for technology’s sake. Instead of offering the latest innovations, because we feel we have to keep up with the times, let’s listen to our customers and find the most innovative solution to meet their needs.
There’s no logic in chasing technology, but there is an art to ensuring that innovations are right for our customers before introducing them. That means taking the time to work with partners, listening to their needs, and finding the right e-commerce solutions for them, however advanced they are on the technological path.
After all, it’s patently nonsense to launch an all singing, all dancing online system if none of our customers are geared up to use it. Instead, let’s go out and meet customers to work through and develop the right systems for them.
There are significant barriers for many brokers to be able to use online mortgage systems successfully, but as lenders we can help people surmount them. We have the experience and knowledge to do so and have a responsibility to engage with customers to produce the best solutions for us all.
There are examples of good practice in the market which we can all aspire to and there has been moves to enable mortgage intermediaries to submit applications via packagers, as well as directly. This is part of the growing trend in the mortgage industry to make technology work for the benefit of the customer, rather than forcing customers to adapt themselves to fit the technology.
The ability to pass online Key Facts Illustrations, decisions and applications from mortgage intermediary to packager, improves data quality and reduces the need to re-key information. It also allows information to be tailored to allow packagers to process cases more efficiently.
Nothing stands still
What we’re all discovering is nothing stands still in the mortgage industry. We know that whatever moves we make now are likely to be superseded by improvements in due course.
Sourcing systems are a real opportunity for us to meet our customers on their terms. It means they no longer have to struggle with logging onto a range of different lenders’ systems.
Consequently, looking ahead, I can see lenders moving away from offering competing systems and instead looking for opportunities to concentrate on their commonality. In other words, rather than developing technology to give themselves a competitive advantage, more lenders are moving towards providing technology that gives mortgage intermediaries what they want.
Common standards
Common industry standards are already emerging which will provide a smoother experience for brokers and packagers alike. It’s something a number of lenders are already working towards as part of the eMortgage Forum. This involves over 30 organisations from around the mortgage sector striving to define and develop a common set of data standards. This means essentially that parties that need to exchange data between them, whether lenders, packagers, networks or sourcing systems, do not need to create bespoke forms for each of their partners. With these standards it will enable more cost-efficient e-commerce development and integration and greater opportunities for collaboration and business growth.
The net result of that, of course, is that mortgage intermediaries will be free to spend more time with their clients, selling products, rather than having to allow for hours of administration when sourcing mortgages and completing applications. Mortgage packagers, too, are being included in this e-commerce revolution and we, like most lenders, are ensuring that improved functionality will lend enormous time saving benefits to packaging partners.
So, the future promises greater convergence and improved e-commerce functionality between all parties involved in the market, which will help put the focus back on the products, rather than the delivery system, and e-commerce will become the gateway not the barrier to doing better business.
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