The study, conducted through a detailed questionnaire from each lender participant, hopes to ‘enable lenders to evaluate their business costs, quality and productivity against the benchmark’.
Phil Heaton-Jones, head of mortgage product management and consulting at Marlborough Stirling, believes this year’s study has two specific aims. Firstly, to broaden the base of the study attracting more participants, while retaining the lenders who took part last year. And secondly, to broaden the scope of the study, by casting an eye over different areas of interest.
As a result of consultation with last year’s participants and the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), the study will look at a number of additional topics including intermediary lending, further advance processing and management of redemptions.
This year Marlborough Stirling are hoping to sign up in excess of twenty lenders to participate - an increase from the 15 that took part in 2003. “For us the bigger the sample, the more meaningful the statistics,” said Heaton-Jones. “As this study enters its second year, lenders will be able to derive the added benefit of tracking its findings against those produced last year.”
With CML membership currently standing at 140 lenders, Heaton-Jones acknowledged that the study could only be worth undertaking if the participants covered a cross-section of the industry. “It’s safe for you to assume that they do,” he added.
The confidential results of the study will be made available to the partipating lenders in the Autumn, with some high level outcomes also released to the industry.
