Brokers who are unable to submit cases online will still be able to submit business via the lender’s panel of packagers. The only other lender which has to date made the successful transition to an exclusively online service is Alliance & Leicester, it made the transition back in October 2004.
BM’s new web portal will include product updates, information on regulation as well as streaming videos and news from the market. It is expected to go online by the end of the first quarter of this year.
Matt Grayson, public relations manager at BM Solutions, explained: “With the vast majority of brokers now comfortable with technology and happy to submit their cases online it made sense to take the next step of moving to a 100 per cent online system.
“Setting up the ‘BM World’ portal makes sense for us because it is a further investment in our online offering to intermediaries.” Mehrdad Yousefi, head of intermediary mortgages at Alliance & Leicester, said: “We are delighted to see that BM Solutions are following our lead and embracing 100 per cent online trading for intermediaries - it is great news for the intermediary market.
“We firmly believe that it is the best way to transact mortgage business, especially in the newly regulated environment. We fully expect other lenders to follow suit in the coming months.” Charles Gooding, managing director of the first4brokers network, welcomed the news.
He said: “We run an online compliance system anyway so we would encourage all our appointed represenatives (Ars) to take advantage of lender’s online systems. “This is definitely the right direction for the industry to be moving.”
