This year has probably been the strangest of our working lives but, if there’s one positive to take from it, it’s the propulsion of technology that has been driven by the need to carry on with some kind of ‘business as usual’ for everyone.
Regularly using the likes of Zoom – whether for a quiz night with family and friends, or to conduct meetings with people around the country who would otherwise have been a road trip away – we’ve all had to get used to life on the ‘small screen’ this year.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Companies have noticed the benefits from both a cost and a time perspective when conducting all meetings via Zoom, Teams, etcetera. These technologies have existed for years but were massively under-utilised in favour of physical meetings.
Over the years much has been made of doing business face to face, but we are seeing that this isn’t always necessary and that relationships can be built and fostered in the virtual world. And of course there is the comical element as everyone gets used to the new meeting formats, which can be likened to a séance with calls of ‘Is anybody there?’ and ‘Give me a sign if you can hear me’ as we watch people still trying to fathom turning on their video and taking themselves off mute.
Online events
One thing in particular we have seen this year is brokers’ hunger for knowledge and learning continuing to grow. With so much changing in the industry, they have needed to find ways to stay in touch with the ever-moving lending landscape.
Webinars have taken off like never before. Perhaps previously thought of as the poor relation of a physical event, they are now the only option for many.
Our industry puts on some great events in the form of conferences, roundtables, exhibitions, etcetera, and it will do so again when the time is right. In the short term, however, the array of webinars hosted to replace these events has been spectacular. Of course, the online events don’t give brokers the opportunity to chat to one another over a coffee and pass on ideas and best practice. What they do provide, however, is an opportunity to participate for brokers who may not have been able to attend the physical events. This could be because of travelling time or distance, but these factors are transcended in the virtual world as brokers from literally every part of the country can join in and learn together.
The other area of great interest this year has been sourcing, and much has been made about bringing products and criteria together on the same systems. While we have seen this happen to an extent, brokers are right to expect more than has been delivered up to now. Having access to what are in effect two systems via one login is progress, but hardly what could be called ‘innovation’.
Collaboration
In 2020, brokers have the right to demand more of technology, and this year we’ve seen the equity release sector lead the way in this area. On Air Sourcing, a broker can now select filters for both products and criteria at the same time, and pull out the results for clients that fit their criteria and for which they qualify on this basis. To achieve this, collaboration has been key and is undoubtedly the way forward.
There is a lot to be said for the ‘best of breed’ products; providers coming together to achieve the ultimate goal in technology. The players in the residential and buy-to-let tech spaces have some serious catching-up to do, but it won’t be long before brokers in these areas have access to the holy grail of combined mortgage product and criteria sourcing.
We can’t predict the future, and all bets are off for 2021, but we should expect that, for the most part, it will be more of the same. But if more of the same means real advances in technology in the tools that brokers need in their day-to-day work, it’s not going to be all bad. Combine that with more access to knowledge and learning for more brokers than ever before and the pandemic will have yielded some true positives.
Our industry is progressive and resilient, and if ever there were two traits needed right now these have to be high on the list. There is some really exciting innovation coming down the line and there are certainly reasons to be optimistic about the advancements in technology in the intermediary mortgage space.
Perhaps we won’t have to wait until 2021 to see the first of these…
Nicola Firth is chief executive of Knowledge Bank
