Atom has cut the time from agreement in principle (AIP) to offer by 80% over the past year to an average of five working days.

The lender says it has made 87 enhancements to its adviser portal, mostly as a result of broker feedback, which are helping advisers to save time.

As well as driving down the time taken for a full mortgage agreement, Atom says its average time from application to AIP is now one working day, but it is often even faster than this.

Among the enhancements it has made, Atom has expanded its use of the Companies House application programming interface (API), which it plugs into in order to populate its forms with information about individuals and linked businesses.

It has updated the portal’s interface to make it more intuitive and easier for brokers to navigate, including making it faster to upload multiple documents.

A new broker dashboard allows advisers to clone applications and keep track of several cases at once

It has also added tools to provide quick validation on the viability of cases to save brokers from spending time on applications that are unlikely to succeed.

Atom head of business lending Tom Renwick says: “Over the last couple of years, we have made more than 150 improvements to the Portal and processes, which have been the result of extensive dialogue with our broker partners.

“The results speak for themselves, substantially increasing our operational capacity while maintaining market-leading speeds for application-to-AIP, and significantly reducing the time taken to move from AIP to offer.

“We view our relationship with brokers as symbiotic: we win and lose together.”

Mortgage and Finance Arena commercial finance manager Shahjahan Alam says: “The portal is now much more intuitive, faster and smoother to use, and ensures I can deliver an even better experience to my clients.

“The combination of the improved technology with the personal touch provided by the commercial team is a really compelling one.”