The past week has been volatile in the mortgage market with the rise in core inflation to 6.8% from 6.2% putting more pressure on the Bank of England to raise base rate. Meanwhile, swap rates have been rising and impacting fixed mortgage rates.  

Over the past week Moneyfacts has reported that more than 800 mortgage products have been withdrawn from the market. This included over 400 buy-to-let products with the total number falling from 2,748 to 2,343.  

Many lenders have pulled products and not immediately replaced them, partly due to interest rate volatility. But also partly, and less reported on, due to the length of time it takes them to do so because they are beholden to the time frames and SLA’s of their third party technology providers.  

With so many lenders wanting to make product changes at the same time, they may find themselves queuing up at their technology provider behind other lenders waiting for their turn to make the necessary system changes. 

This is one of the several reasons why we decided to build our own broker portal, in-house, which we have been using for just over a year. In addition to being fast, efficient, intuitive and easy to use, it means we can change, or create products in hours, not days.  

There are huge advantages to owning our own system and a very important one is that we are in full control of our own destiny. Changes can be made very quickly, and we can react to the market with rate changes, launch new products at speed, tweak lending criteria and add new functionality exactly when we want to.  

This gives us a competitive advantage as we were able to demonstrate last week when, along with other lenders, we withdrew some products. However, we replaced them immediately, to ensure the broker market knew we were still ‘in the game,’ so to speak.  

Mortgage pricing is key for lenders, intermediaries and their clients, especially in today’s market, but there are other factors for intermediaries to consider such as ease of application, speed and service. However, perhaps more consideration should be given to whether a lender owns their own technology and therefore has full control over product withdrawals and new product launches. 

Paul Brett is managing director for intermediaries at Landbay