In my recent comment on Budget day, I scored the chancellor a seven out of 10.

Beyond the extension of the furlough scheme and more general economic support, the most immediate relief for home-buyers and the property industry took the form of an extension of the stamp duty holiday and its gradual tapering to help avoid a cliff edge in October.

Then there was the announcement of more help for future home buyers in the shape of a government mortgage guarantee for those borrowing at 95% up to a value of £600,000.

All of this support is welcome but we must see it for what it is – namely support that props up a market which largely operates on a model derived over fifty years ago when payslips were commonplace and self-employment was largely the preserve of the wealthy.

The economic issues coming down the track mean that the people needing loans are increasingly not ‘vanilla’.

Furlough earnings, mortgage payment deferrals and rising numbers of ‘gig economy’ workers mean that the challenges facing lenders are manifold. Product design and the processes that support it need to evolve.

Even organisations that have traditionally championed manual underwriting are quietly wondering if that boast is up to the scale of the unknown challenges that lie ahead. What’s more, a market that was once their own is now becoming the preserve of bigger lenders who face the same underwriting challenges.

Harnessing technology

Products need to address the granular nature of what is happening in the market – but equally granular products require processes and technology that support them. It is of little use having products that address new ways of living and working if the suitability and assessment systems which allow brokers to source and access these products cannot cater for the complexity and scale of demand.

Clever, relevant products need to be accessible so help can be reached efficiently for all concerned from the borrower to broker to lender.

This way everyone knows where they stand before an application is submitted. This in turn helps the underwriting process which itself needs to be ready to cope, at scale, with the new complexities of employment, working practices and earning patterns of customers going forward.

From internal dependencies between origination and core banking infrastructure to APIs with distributors and third-party processes, the lending digital eco-system is about understanding how an organisation’s digital approach supports and interacts with everything necessary around it to thrive – and that includes the new types of borrowers that the pandemic will generate.

As I have said before, success is about understanding the complex without making it complicated. Technology should not raise questions, it should help to answer them.

‘Urgency’

It has long been acknowledged that improving customer experience, automating buying processes, streamlining affordability underwriting are all objectives of lenders, brokers and estate agents alike.

The past year has injected some urgency into automating and improving processes but that was about making current practices more digital.

The coming months and years will be as much about making better use of technology to support the granularity of understanding needed to create products that meet the needs of future borrowers.

Tim Hague is managing partner at Sagis