What value do mortgage clubs really add? This may be a strange question to be asked by the head of a mortgage club, but it’s one that we have asked ourselves a lot over the past 18 months. Even before the pandemic, we were surveying brokers, borrowers and lenders to identify what their challenges were.   

In so many cases it comes down to technology.  Challenges for brokers to find the right product or criteria, how do they get the best rate, how to find and qualify new clients, particularly in a world that works increasingly remotely.  If you’re a broker and you do find a new client while working remotely, how do you then carry out the necessary anti-money laundering checks to verify the client is who they say they are? 

Brokers also have to satisfy the lenders’ requirements that the client is credit worthy and can actually afford the mortgage, and negotiate lenders’ different mortgage application systems. This is a lot on a broker’s plate beyond advising the client on the best mortgage to have.   

So the challenge for mortgage clubs, is how to really help brokers to get all the information they need to service their clients and the lenders. How to pull it all into one place, combining payment and processing in a way that blends technology with the other services that brokers need – and giving more revenue back to brokers at the same time. 

Borrowers are looking for a service that provides them with the information they need instantly, while also having someone at the end of the phone or email that they can speak to, to reassure them. That human touch combined with the slick turnaround they experience elsewhere, that can only be provided by technology. 

So if the borrower’s needs are moving on at a rate of knots, and brokers need to too, then mortgage clubs need to also evolve to make sure that they are providing the value add that we all now expect from any provider.   

Brokers have had to change their businesses dramatically, so it is really enough for mortgage clubs just to provide a route to lenders? We think not.  For mortgage clubs to have a future it makes sense for us to change the way that we operate, not only to meet the current need but the need for the future. We need to keep the traditional access to a wide panel of lenders with prompt payment of proc fees, but it’s time that all clubs upped their game to provide the technological solutions brokers need to continue to meet their clients’ changing demands. 

Melanie Spencer is head of MCI Mortgage Club