Lisa Martin (LM): The Covid-19 crisis has accelerated the development and implementation of technology in the mortgage market. Which digital tools will be most beneficial to intermediaries both during the rest of the crisis and once the market returns to normal?

Rameez Zafar (RZ): Like every other business in the world, advisers had to pivot to work-from-home, so there’s been an urgency in adopting technology to support digital communication and workflow management.

Most of this is now in place with Zoom, Teams, and other productivity tools keeping business running as usual.

More broadly, advisers needed to revisit their sales process to reduce the number of manual steps, or replace parts of the process that require face-to-face interaction with the client.

Until things go back to normal, advisers need to explore solutions to simplify ID verification and contract signatures.

There are plenty of solutions out there which can offer simple digital alternatives for advisers and they’re easy to use and to set up.

Much like Zoom and Teams have become BAU, these digital tools have become plug and play. My advice to advisers is find a solution that does the specific job you need, but more importantly is easy for you to use.

The pandemic has highlighted a key blind spot for advisers too – the limited amount of communication and digital touchpoints they have with their client.

Take the example of payment holidays, lenders were proactively contacting every client to educate them and offer support.

Many advisers missed a trick here, by not offering the same level of support. This highlighted the need to be more dynamic, nimble, and communicative than in the past.

Advisers are no longer able to rely on the bare minimum of contacting a client when they’re up for review i.e. after two to five years of radio silence.

LM: What do technology providers need to take into account when it comes to developing platforms for advisers? What are the biggest issues facing advisers in this area?

RZ: Both technology providers and advisers need to realise that data is their most valuable asset. Data and your client bank are one and the same thing – so when the data is poor there are direct implications for your business – you’re losing money. Right now, technology is limited in its ability to assist businesses in reducing costs or increasing revenue – all due to poor data.

Tech systems need to neutralise inaccurate and unsecure static data with accurate and consistent timely data.

Tech needs to evolve and become more data aware, either recognising or resolving data errors. 100% of the clients we work with have issues with their data, for example poor end date keying – we see it all the time.

The standard is that the providers just store what you give them and now that’s not good enough – what we’re doing is proactively building software that recognises these algorithms and flags them for people so business stops slipping through the cracks.

LM: Looking ahead to the next 12 months, what do technology providers and developers need to be doing more of in your view?

RZ: Truly exploring connectivity. All technology providers need to have clear lines drawn of where they live in the value chain.

The ‘jack-of-all-trades, master of none’ software causes frustration in the market. Challenges arise when advisers want to use a variety of software, but none communicates. Advisers will try to string things together, but now it’s really on technology providers to make that happen.

The feedback we hear most is that the migration from one software to another is painful, costly and prohibitive. Advisers are unable to bolt things onto their additional system.

This is feedback that the technology market must address – we have to become an open ecosystem.

Look at B2B SaaS in every other market – everything talks to everything. Our market is six to seven years behind; this communication is standard in all other software industries – it’s just expected now.

LM: What do you think the next big development will be in mortgage tech?

RZ: It’s hard to point out one. There are a couple of trends that could indicate big developments. The digital connectivity between advisers and lenders is improving. Will we reach a point where advisers will get instant decisions?

The risk is lenders making this technology readily available to the rest of the market. The knock-on effect of this is comparison sites offering instant mortgages as well as property portals like Rightmove or Zoopla.

Meanwhile customers are much more comfortable consuming the majority of their services and goods digitally. Whether that’s doing their shopping online, video calls with their family and even business to business.

Anyone who isn’t keeping up with this trend risks coming across to clients as outdated. More touchpoints, education, context, content, and flexibility are needed to manage the client relationship, because having some sort of real relationship with your borrowers is essential.

It’s the anchor to a much larger lifelong relationship and the solutions that give the advisers more digital interaction via email or otherwise are the new normal.

LM: What would be your advice to lenders looking to improve their digital offering for advisers?

RZ: One of the frustrations and challenges for advisers is managing client relationships from the point of submission through to completion. Today some portals may offer case status updates, but for the most part, advisers are on hold to their lender for hours to even understand what’s going on.

Instead, lenders should implement a digital comms engine that should automatically email advisers as each case progresses, it shouldn’t need an adviser to log into a portal or make a call. It’s inefficient for both the lender and the adviser.

Plus, there needs to be a focus on improving the post completion customer experience. Compare the digital retail current account experience to that of your mortgage experience – they’re miles apart in development.

The technology hasn’t been upgraded in years and falls short of what consumers expect, now more than ever.

Lisa Martin (pictured, left) is development director of TMA Club & Rameez Zafar is CEO of Eligible.ai