Q: Why is the quality agenda so important to Abbey and how important a role will it play in the post-MMR world?
A: Our focus on quality lending is ultimately driven by our commitment to work with our intermediary partners to offer borrowers the right mortgage for their needs.
Since we began working with our Key Account partners last July to review business quality using a basket of metrics, the quality agenda has rapidly gained momentum across the whole of the market and with just one year to go until the implementation of MMR, quality is becoming more important than ever.
With MMR focusing on customer outcome, there is a clear need for lenders and intermediaries to work together to offer borrowers the right mortgage for their needs and embedding quality within the mortgage advice and application process is integral to this.
At Abbey for Intermediaries (AFI), we review the quality of cases submitted by our Key Accounts against a number of key metrics, including packaging of cases and the conversion rate of applications to offer.
An analysis of our basket of metrics shows that the overall business quality of cases received over the past nine months has increased significantly.
This has been achieved by working together with our Key Account partners to improve case packaging and the quality of information provided, helping to ensure that the mortgage is right for that customer.
Looking ahead to MMR and the quality of the information that intermediaries submit to lenders will be even more important from next April.
It will be the lender’s responsibility to assess affordability in all cases after MMR and lenders will need to work closely with intermediaries to ensure they capture and document all required information about the borrower.
This will be particularly key for lenders in areas such as lending into retirement and interest-only, and at AFI, we’ve been working hard over the past year to ensure we are MMR ready by improving our plausibility requirements and sampling process.
Our goal has been to better support the conversations that intermediaries have with their clients during the mortgage application process and work together to ensure we are writing quality mortgage business.
It’s to the benefit of both the end customer and our industry as a whole that the quality agenda has now become so deeply ingrained in how we think and act. With the spotlight on quality very much here to stay, we’ll be continuing to work closely with our intermediary partners to improve quality and support the transition to the post MMR world.
