Nottingham Building Society carried out a survey that found that nine in 10 brokers said lenders are already using technology effectively to support brokers and improve the end-to-end mortgage journey. However, a similar percentage wanted technology to play a bigger role in streamlining the mortgage application process.
Aaron Shinwell, chief lending officer at Nottingham Building Society, said: “Technology is already making parts of the mortgage process work better, but brokers are telling us very clearly where the next wave of improvement needs to land.
“It has to help with the real pinch points – borrowers with complex incomes, case visibility, reducing time-intensive administrative tasks and the moments where a good case can stall because the system isn’t capable of reading the full picture.”
Making a difference
Shinwell said the findings suggest the debate is moving on from whether technology has a place in mortgages to how it can make the biggest difference.
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Broker responses suggest they want systems that reduce friction, improve visibility and help lenders assess cases that do not fit standard affordability models, he said.
A third of brokers said better handling of complex or non-standard cases is where technology improvements would have the greatest positive impact. Similar proportions pointed to clearer tracking of case progress (33%), better integration between broker systems and lenders (32%), and faster decision in principle (DIP) outcomes (32%).
Nearly a third (32%) said reducing manual document submission would improve their ability to place cases. A similar proportion (31%) said more consistent underwriting decisions would make a positive difference.
Caution remains around AI
The survey revealed that brokers are still cautious about the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in lending.
One in three said they would be comfortable seeing greater use of AI or automation in document verification and administration (33%), initial affordability assessments (33%), broker-lender communications (33%), case prioritisation and triage (32%), customer journey updates and tracking (31%), and income and expenditure analysis (31%).
Brokers also see specific areas where AI could help the market. More than a fifth (22%) said AI could have its biggest positive impact in supporting regulatory and compliance checks, while around a fifth pointed to supporting borrowers with multiple income streams (21%) and better interpretation of income and expenditure (20%).
These views come after recent reports that AI-created documents could fool existing security systems, with more improvements needed in some cases.
Nottingham Building Society recently launched its new proprietary mortgage platform, Inviting Difference In (IDI), developed in partnership with MQube and powered by its Origo technology. It is designed to streamline underwriting and reduce friction across the mortgage journey through AI-driven processing and automation.
The platform uses AI-driven underwriting to automate document checks and affordability assessments, only requesting additional information when needed, and is designed to deliver decisions in minutes rather than weeks.
