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Author: Conor Murphy - Date: 22nd April 2020 - Publication: Mortgage Strategy For brokers big and small, the Covid-19 crisis is posing questions about how to keep business moving when disruption sets in. Many firms are working from home, but this is significantly easier for some than for others. Source: https://www.mortgagestrategy.co.uk/opinion/digitised-data-is-the-way-forward/

Conor Murphy of Smartr365, Jonathan Evans from Digidentity and Danny Belton at Legal & General Mortgage Club met recently to talk about how to improve the ID verification process when buying a house.

In the UK there is an emerging trend of consumers being prompted to switch mortgages ‘in-deal’. These prompts may come from a range of sources, and they can sometimes present positive options for borrowers who are coming to the end of their fixed term. However, there is a significant group of borrowers who are being prompted to switch early on in their deal, and this is where problems may arise.

Technology can be one of an adviser’s biggest assets in the mortgage business, and as the market evolves and grows, it’s becoming increasingly vital that advisers are using a tech platform that not only keeps up but provides a real competitive advantage.

With lenders offering direct mortgage switches, brokers must new use tech solutions to engage with customers and explain the value they add.

Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, are big news in mortgageland right now. APIS enable applications to ‘talk to each other’. This means the speedy and secure transfer of data between different systems and platforms, such as lenders and distributors.

Technology that doesn’t do what it is supposed to do is a curse on modern life. Most of us have had cause to hate our workplace IT solutions from time to time, particularly when it becomes painfully clear that a system’s better days were a long time ago.

Lenders are making progress in preventing mortgage fraud, but the threat remains serious – there were almost 2,500 cases in 2018 according to CIFAS, and this grew in the first half of 2019.

Make no mistake, change is coming to the mortgage industry. What has been a slow drip in recent years will very soon turn into a tidal wave, and technology will transform the world of mortgages.

Whether a broker has been in business for 10 years or 10 months, it is likely they already have processes in place to manage all their clients and the mortgage application. To a greater or lesser extent, technology will support these activities.

We spoke to Stephen Nobes, head of network and club relationships at Smartr365, about how small brokers can compete with the largest firms in the UK and why connectivity is key.

Open Banking has been with us for over a year now but its impact to date has been somewhat muted, as the potential of this new and revolutionary technology remains unfulfilled.

Demand for mortgages in London is on the rise despite concerns a disorderly Brexit has negatively impacted the housing market, says Conor Murphy, founder and chief executive of Capricorn Financial Consultancy and Smartr365.

Whether a broker has been in business for 10 years or 10 months, it is likely they already have processes in place to manage all their clients and the mortgage application. To a greater or lesser extent, technology will support these activities.

We spoke to Conor Murphy, CEO of Smartr365, about why mortgage technology is reaching a tipping point in 2019 and what a 'MortgageKanban' involves.

 Smartr365 has today launched ‘SmartrSuitability’, a new platform feature which significantly reduces the time required to produce both mortgage and protection suitability letters, saving brokers up to an hour per application. SmartrSuitability is the final step in the end-to-end, automated mortgage process.

Smartr365 and Digidentity can today announce that brokers who use Smartr365 will be the only ones able to offer digital remortgage deed signing to their clients.

Smartr365, the end-to-end mortgage platform, will integrate with Mortgage Engine to enhance its direct-to-lender connections and give users access to Santander for Intermediaries and NatWest Intermediary Solutions for automated decision in principle (DIP) submissions. 

Smartr365 and Twenty7Tec have today announced a long term extension to their existing working relationship. Twenty7Tec’s MortgageSource system remains Smartr365’s preferred mortgage sourcing solution, and is fully integrated within the Smartr365 platform.

Smartr365 has today announced that from Q2 this year, its users will be able to automatically submit decision in principle applications to TSB, Principality Building Society and Darlington Building Society through its latest API integration with Iress’ Lender Connect.

Smartr365, the end-to-end mortgage platform, today announces it has received ISO27001 certification from business standards certification body British Standards Institute (BSI).

Source: https://www.mortgageintroducer.com/lessons-brokers-can-learn-tidying-marie-kondo/ A new trend has taken hold of the nation – ‘Tidying Up’ with Marie Kondo (pictured). Kondo, the Japanese ‘tidying up’ consultant, is a best-selling author and has her own hit...

24th September 2019 The FCA’s Mortgage Market Study published in March points to a shift in the market that could have serious consequences for the role of the intermediary. And I don’t mean the potential for an increase in execution-only business. While that danger...

9th September 2019 Smartr365 will be integrating Legal & General Mortgage Club’s digital mortgage criteria searching tool, SmartrCriteria. The tool provides brokers with 394,000 criteria outcomes from over 95 lenders to determine the best possible outcome for...

17th June 2019 Smartr365 has today launched ‘SmartrDoc’ – an integrated storage system which allows brokers to retrieve, sort and store all relevant client documents in one place.  An example can be viewed here. Smartr365’s integrations with Digidentity (digital ID...

7th June 2019 Smartr365 has today added Nationwide for Intermediaries into the lender panel within its platform, offering automated mortgage application submission thanks to an API-free connection between the two services. This API-free connection has been developed...

14th June 2019 Having a good customer relationship management (CRM) system is a simple way to improve the way a business operates, enabling brokers to collect, access, and use client data effectively in a post-GDPR world. A CRM system captures and digitises client...

15th May 2019 We've sent people into space, built driverless cars, and engineered robots that can think like us. And yet, fixing the mortgage approval process still seems out of humanity’s reach. The market is riddled with inefficiencies. Consumers are forced to fill...

31st May 2019 Smartr365, the end-to-end mortgage platform, has today announced the appointment of Stephen Nobes as Head of Network and Club Relationships.  As part of Smartr365’s continuing development, Stephen will be responsible for driving business growth and...

Smartr365, the end-to-end fintech mortgage platform, has today launched a new MortgageKanban feature. Developed after months of research and discussion with mortgage brokers, the MortgageKanban embodies Smartr365’s commitment to producing one of the...