Alan Hough, IT Sales Director of Moneyfacts explains: “One of the reasons why big banks make big profits is because of customer inertia. Many customers are paying too much for a standard variable rate mortgage or have savings invested in accounts paying low interest. But many people don’t switch to better products either because they simply don’t know about other products available or they think it’s too complicated to change. In practice, most lenders now make it very easy to switch.
“The market is very competitive and you may not even have to change provider to save money. But the array of mortgage products and incentives – fixed rates, discounted rates, trackers, offsets, cash back, capped rates and more – can seem bewildering. However websites such as Moneyextra and Moneyfacts can help you find a better mortgage rate simply and without bombarding you with jargon.
“Many websites have neither the resources nor the expertise to research the mortgage market fully or perform complex mortgage calculations. Because of this they often show headline rates only, which disguise the real cost of the mortgage. Or they use a white-label service, which usually has a one-size-fits-all approach and doesn’t integrate well with the home website’s customer proposition.”
Moneyfacts has addressed these issues by developing a mortgage web service which allows a website to retain full control over the client interface. Chriss Barnard, Senior Software Developer at Moneyfacts says: “The Moneyfacts Mortgage Webservice is built using the latest Microsoft technology, running on top of the .NET framework. This allows us to provide a solution that is managed and scalable. The service is exposed to customers over the Internet, via the industry standard SOAP protocol, allowing easy integration into other platforms. By leveraging the SOAP messaging standard we have tightly coupled the interface in order to decrease integration time. We produced a full working system with Moneyextra in a very short period of time.”
Alan Hough concludes: “The .NET framework is reducing costs and improving our capabilities. But it’s the final application, not the technology, which is key. Websites such as Moneyfacts and Moneyextra put consumers in charge by allowing them to look for a better deal on their finances without feeling under pressure.”
