Sourcing systems Mortgage 2000 and Mortgage Brain announced the launch of a common e-trading platform at The Mortgage Event, which will be available to mortgage intermediaries.
The platform, Mortgage Trading Exchange, will allow intermediaries to trade electronically with lenders who account for over 70% of the mortgage market.
Mark Lofthouse, chief executive officer of Mortgage Brain, explained: ‘The Mortgage Trading Exchange has a common front end, called the Mortgage Application Processing System. This has a common navigation, look and feel for inputting information for e-trading. Either sourcing system will populate information into it, avoiding re-keying of data, and submit it to the lender.’
In terms of this agreement, Mortgage Brain and Mortgage 2000 remain separate companies, and the sourcing systems remain completely unchanged. Subscribers to either system will not notice any change in the look and feel of either system and will not have to switch system to benefit. Complementary products, such as insurance sourcing tie-ins, will remain separate.
Mortgage Brain and Mortgage 2000 are the two largest mortgage sourcing systems. Mortgage Brain has 17 lender partners, accounting for 60% of new mortgage business. Mortgage 2000 has 38, accounting for 15% of new mortgage business. The partnership will allow intermediaries to trade with over 50 lender partners, transacting over 70% of new business in the UK.
Discussions with further lender partners are taking place and new participants are expected to be announced in due course.
Commenting on rumours of an e-trading agreement between Mortgage 2000 and Abbey National, Sean Hornsby, sales and marketing director at Mortgage 2000, said: ‘Mortgage 2000 has been in discussion on ways to e-trade with Abbey National since Abbey joined the mortgage club. Now, as part of this agreement, I sincerely hope Abbey National and others, will join the Mortgage Trading Exchange.’
He added: ‘The development of this platform is an important threshold for intermediary e-trading in the UK. This step is further evidence that it is not a question of if the majority of mortgage business will be transferred electronically, but when.’
Commenting, Nick Caplan, chief operating officer of IFonline, owners of Trigold, denied this alliance would cause problems for it’s own common trading platform.
He said: ‘The impact on us is marginal as we already offer this level of functionality. As far as we are concerned, they are just catching up. We have already gone one step beyond intermediaries being able to apply online to lenders and have real-time decisions in place. But how far you can go with this ends up depending on the technology the lenders have in place.’
