Lenders stuck in the non-digital dark ages
Free UK news agency, Newspage, asked brokers which lenders are pushing the boundaries of tech, and which are behind the curve when it comes to processing mortgage applications. Their views are below.
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5 responses from the Newspage communityCopy all
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As a Northern Ireland-based firm, we have access to some of the local building societies and banks. Progressive Building Society have only recently upgraded to an online system, but the one lender stuck firmly in the 1980s remains AIB. Requiring full paper application and a wet signature on the declaration and mandate, AIB are single-handedly destroying rain forests and keeping the Royal Mail afloat.
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Some of the building societies that are struggling with service levels right now need to look at embracing tech. There’s no excuse given the lower levels of new business we have seen over the summer. Whilst high street lenders like Halifax are achieving offers in one day, the likes of Dudley Building Society are taking four months to offer cases, which borders on farce. Tech will save money, time and enhance the client and broker journey. It’s simple really.
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For mainstream lenders, Halifax are the Beneteau of mortgage vessels: slick, premium and top of the heap. The rubber dinghy of mortgages, to continue the nautical metaphor, is Barclays. They are just disastrous and love to overcomplicate an application.
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For most lenders, their online system is at least functional and has seen vast improvements over the last few years, incorporating checks on ID, income and property values in just a few seconds. However, some of the smaller building societies still insist on manual underwriting and a suitcase of documents, and that is often why their systems are unfortunately slow. There are plenty of 'off the peg' solutions that the smaller lenders can use simply to speed up their processing.
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Good lenders have objective, quick and ideally automated processes. Any lender that uses MSO or whose name rhymes with Schmalifax perform well for this reason. Poor lenders don't. Poor lenders hide behind 'discretion' as though they only ever use discretion to help through cases in a grey area or outside of policy. Whilst some lenders use discretion fantastically (BOI Bespoke, Suffolk, Coventry just to shout out a few) lots of dinosaur lenders mainly just use discretion to waterboard clients over a period of 4 months, asking for endless documents and putting them in a 3-week queue after they ask the client for an answer to a self-evident question. And they do so in dribs and drabs rather than all once, to really test people's patience. I hate to name and shame, but Dudley Building Society, your underwriting process just isn't up to scratch.