It has been an eventful Autumn for Kensington Mortgages, which has announced a number of exciting developments and enhancements to its e-commerce platform, K-net. Kensington has always prided itself on a reputation for high service standards and continues to use service as a foundation from which to build its K-net offering.
Harnessing technology
At the end of September, K-net launched automated valuation models (AVMs) and electronic identification verification (e-IDs) as part of an ongoing drive to cut the time between application, offer and completion. With AVMs, there are no delays caused by appointing and waiting for a physical valuation, while e-IDs reduce the documentation supplied by a borrower, making the process quicker and easier. AVMs and e-IDs can now be used on remortgage applications for loans up to £150,000 on properties valued up to £500,000, with a maximum loan-to-value of 75 per cent. They have already helped us issue an unconditional mortgage offer in less than 12 working hours and are a fine of example of how Kensington is harnessing technology to improve its service offering to borrowers.
Working with packagers
AVMs and e-IDs were not the only development to K-net this Autumn – Kensington also pioneered a new way for lenders to deal with packagers, with the launch of K-link.
K-link is the first large scale connectivity programme of its kind, allowing packagers to link into Kensington’s K-net system so they can provide brokers with instant decisions and Key Facts Illustrations (KFIs) direct from the lender.
The first packager partners to be part of K-link were Solent Mortgage Services and Primrose. Kensington is also in talks with a number of other packaging partners, including the Professional Mortgage Packagers Alliance (PMPA), whose involvement in K-link will be announced over the coming months.
The specialist mortgage market is the core area of expertise for packagers as many brokers need advice with the more complex process of product selection. While some brokers are comfortable that they have a good working knowledge of specialist lenders and their products, many feel the need to use a packager’s knowledge in this market. Yet when it comes to e-commerce many lenders seem to have forgotten what an important role packagers play in the process. With K-link, Kensington is reaffirming its commitment to ‘Treating Customers Fairly’ (TCF) by making it easier for brokers do business via packagers and source products from the whole market, rather than just one lender’s website.
K-link reinforces Kensington’s ongoing commitment to e-commerce development and its packager partners, and Kensington continues to work proactively to help packagers to assist brokers in finding the most appropriate product for their client. Indeed Kensington remains the only lender that allows brokers to submit an application direct to packagers from its own website
Further developments to K-net will be announced in the future and these will continue to demonstrate how Kensington is pioneering new ways to enhance the service it provides to both packagers and brokers.
Underwriting process
As part of its commitment to service, Kensington knows that it cannot neglect the important role that people continue to play in the underwriting process. With 11 years’ experience of the specialist sector, Kensington has seen how technology has shaped the sector and knows just how important it will be in the future. But we are also aware of the different circumstances that underpin the specialist mortgage market and that a machine could never truly understand the subtleties of these circumstances.
There is most certainly a place for automation, including credit scoring and automated valuations, in some segments of the specialist market, but for so many other borrowers with more complex circumstances, a fully automated underwriting process can end frustratingly with: ‘computer says no’. Kensington knows this approach to service can be infuriating for borrowers whose circumstance cannot be neatly classified, and so it will continue to be pragmatic and consider individual circumstances when it comes to underwriting. Because computers do say no, and, when they do, brokers and borrowers will turn to the incisive and reasoned approach of a human.
Investing in service
What’s more, we are in a people industry and, hand-in-hand with the effective use of technology, there must be people available to handle questions and exceptions and a personality to the service customers receive. Brokers and packagers will have questions they want answered and they want people to answer them, which is why Kensington has also invested heavily in its service centre, based at Reading to complement its development of K-net. The overall result is a complete service solution that has been tailored to the needs of brokers and packagers, however they choose to deal with Kensington Mortgages.
