The survey was conducted by Focus Solutions at their mortgage industry event, held in London at the end of May, entitled ‘Effective distribution – Beyond M-Day’.
Confidence in their peer group was also shown with nearly 80% of the respondents feeling that over half of the lenders in the market were ready for the new regulated world.
Although lenders were keen to put a ‘tick in the box’ for M-Day. When it came to Mandatory Electronic Reporting (MER), the next big hurdle for the mortgage market, a disturbing 58% of the respondents were not aware of XBRL - the technical reporting language, that alongside XML, the FSA will require to be used to submit their data relating to regulatory returns from 1st April 2005.
The survey identified the key obstacle for being ready for MER amongst the lenders was not having the correct computer systems in place (40%), followed by the lack of internal resources to complete the project in time.
Nigel Smith, director of propositions, Focus Solutions commented;
“The fact that lenders feel they are ready for M-Day is a positive message for the market. However, the mortgage market is continuously evolving, so lenders must ensure that any technology solutions they put in place for M-Day must be flexible enough to cope and adapt with future internal and external business requirements.”
The event discussed the potential for electronic trading in the mortgage industry and the importance of technology in enabling organisations to comply with regulation and drive down costs. 50% of the lenders present at the event already offered an electronic mortgage application facility, with the majority (17%) trading with intermediaries via a B2B extranet, followed closely (15%) by trading directly with the consumer via their website.
Nigel Smith concluded;
“If lenders are investing in electronic trading solutions, then being able to re-use IT assets to reduce costs is key in achieving a significant return on that initial investment. Electronic mortgage applications built using XML technology can be built once and deployed on multiple channels, to satisfy both the online and offline requirements for intermediaries.”
