The free service, launched by mortgage broker Danny Matthews, combines digital elements with human advice in a bid to save time for the client and adviser.
Mortgy works in a similar vein to the proposition launched by mortgage broker Trussle last year, directing clients through an online fact find before giving the customer advice and recommending a product via a telephone conversation. Matthews said he would continue to serve his existing clients on a face-to-face basis due to their location.
Using Mortgy, Matthews said he intends to significantly reduce the amount of paperwork involved in the application process while finding a suitable mortgage deal for customers online and by telephone within 30 minutes.
Matthews, who has also worked as an insurance adviser, decided to launch the service after carrying out his own customer experience research over the past two years to find out what consumers wanted when obtaining a mortgage.
“As I expanded my business from insurance to mortgages I felt myself becoming increasingly more frustrated with the old-fashioned processes, especially when you apply for a mortgage,” he said. “We now have better technology and the regulator is much more favourable about the idea of shared data, software integrations and cloud technology to create a safer and better user experience.”
However, Matthews does not feel customers are quite ready to move to a fully automated advice model and believes they still appreciate human intervention when searching for a mortgage.
“Even though the technology is fantastic at helping to solve inefficiencies involved in obtaining a mortgage, I do still think there needs to be a stop button on the back end to say ‘hang on, we need to talk to this client now’ because no one situation is the same.”
From the back end of Mortgy, Matthews can see how many users are on the website and how far applicants are with the fact find process, allowing him to intervene at any time if needed.
Matthews explained that he has ambitions for the service to be used by third party stakeholders such as estate agents and conveyancing firms in the future, but that his main focus at present was to build and expand his business using the online tool.
