Darlington Building Society has launched Mortgage Hub, a new platform for brokers.

The hub is built on Iress’ mortgage sales and originations – or MSO – software and integrates LendingMetrics’ auto decision platform (ADP) technology.

The aim is to streamline the more straightforward parts of a complex mortgage application to make the process faster, although Darlington details that, “a team of experienced underwriters will manually review complicated aspects to ensure that applications are not dismissed simply for being too complex.”

As a result, mortgage volumes will increase and service levels will improve, says the lender.

It adds that it is the first mid-tier building society to partner with Iress in this way.

Darlington chief executive officer Andrew Craddock says: “This is a major investment for Darlington Building Society. We’re thrilled to be the first building society outside of the top 10 to implement this level of technology into our mortgage process.

“Our aim was to improve the efficiency of the mortgage journey for brokers, which I am confident we will achieve with Darlington Mortgage Hub.

“Iress will enable us to sustainably increase our mortgage volume without inflating operating costs and has ultimately streamlined the experience from a broker’s perspective.

“It was a real team effort between the society and the change team to deliver this project, and I encourage brokers to explore the new platform for themselves.”

Iress executive general manager for lending Andrew Simon adds: “We’re immensely proud of the work Darlington and Iress have done over the last several months given the difficulties we’ve all faced.

“Now that the platform is implemented and up and running, we’re looking forward to seeing Darlington realise the benefits of a truly integrated mortgage sales and origination platform.”

And LendingMetrics chief technology officer Neil Williams comments: “Working with Darlington and alongside Iress has provided us with a great opportunity to really see how ADP can be effectively used for assisted – as well as automated – decisioning.”