It claims to reduce 70% of a broker's time with the new service
Mortgage and protection broker Access Financial Services (Access FS) has launched a new administrative service for its brokers.
Access FS said the service, which has been in a pilot for the past four months, has proven to free up to 70% of a broker’s time, with some claiming to increase the amount of mortgage and protection business they write by three times since the scheme has been in place.
The administration team service will provide brokers with a complete support system – helping fill in application forms, getting a successful decision in principle, checking each fact find is complete, chasing customers for supporting information, and reviewing documents to ensure every file is compliant and prepared for signoff.
The team will also ensure that all documents to be submitted are correct and on file before drafting suitability letters for sign off, and then following up on lenders, solicitors, and estate agents as necessary to ensure that a case gets over the line as quickly and smoothly as possible.
Read more: Access FS adds more protection providers to panel.
According to Access FS, the first broker to trial the new service increased the number of applications he could take on by 30% in the first two weeks. This has increased steadily, Access FS added, so that some brokers on the pilot were writing an increase of three times more business within three months of the scheme starting.
“We spoke to our brokers to ask them what their biggest inhibitors to writing more business were and what would most help them,” Karl Wilkinson (pictured), chief executive at Access Financial Services, said. “Overwhelmingly, we heard that the level of administration required, particularly to submit a mortgage case, was taking a huge amount of time and preventing them from seeing the number of clients that they would otherwise be able to.”
Wilkinson related that after looking at the key areas that were absorbing the most time, they came up with a tailor-made proposition to solve the brokers’ issues and enable them to see more clients.
“The results even in the first month were better than any of us imagined they would be,” he said. “We rolled the pilot out to a wider number of brokers, and they all found the same. We are now rolling it out to all of our brokers who want to take it, so they can all benefit.”
Thea Forse, an Access FS broker, attested that the results to their business have been significant since using the new service from Access FS.
“With the administrative help, I was able to write more business in my first month, and now I am consistently seeing more customers and writing more mortgage business,” the broker added.
