Brokers may soon see improvements in lenders’ service as a benchmarking initiative has been launched by Marlborough Stirling in consultation with the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). Lenders will be able to rate their performance in terms of point of sale activities and application processing, against their competitors.
Once the co-designed questionnaire is completed, data will be fed into a generic mortgage processing model to allow like-with-like comparisons and Marlborough Stirling will provide a presentation to each participant’s senior management team highlighting the key findings.
Phil Heaton-Jones, head of mortgage product management and consulting at Marlborough Stirling, said: ‘Lenders will see their own results plus unattributed results across the market, and receive specific recommendations where they might need to pay close attention and on what they need to do to improve those particular processes.’
Marlborough Stirling has researched various ‘what if’ scenarios in order to make recommendations. Before the company highlights any areas of concern it uses modelling software to avoid creating further problems for client companies. ‘If lenders are critically reviewing their processes the outcome should be they are able to offer brokers a better service,’ said Heaton-Jones.
Michael Coogan, director general of the CML, said: ‘Impending regulation of the mortgage market is increasing the pressure on mortgage lenders to drive down the cost of processing business while simultaneously maintaining high standards of productivity and quality of service. It is important for lenders to understand what their current costs of processing business are ‘ at a detailed level ‘ in order to identify areas for improvement and fully assess the impact of regulation.’
Marlborough Sterling is currently talking to over 20 lenders but has a first-year target of 10 to 12 to make results statistically relevant. Pricing is just intended to cover costs and confidentiality of participants’ data will be ensured throughout the process.
