Quite right too. What’s the point of a system that shows incorrect product data? There’s a difference though, between extolling the virtues of accuracy in product data, versus accuracy in the actual results that the system returns.
In their fact find process, intermediaries collect a vast array of relevant information about each client, and indeed about the property they are looking to attain a mortgage for. Information on the client’s income types, credit history, and even property details down to the construction of the property itself, are all meticulously recorded to ensure that the right product is recommended.
Yet despite going to great lengths to capture all this information, too little of it is typically being used by sourcing systems to return product results. Partly this is due to the frustrations of capturing data in one system, invariably a web-based CRM, and then having to re-key it into an offline sourcing system.
But mainly, it is because sourcing systems historically haven’t used enough of a lender’s criteria to deliver accurate results to the broker. Published criteria today includes vast swathes of information on geographic availability, relevant income streams, lenders’ unique definitions of new build, and even the aforementioned property construction types to name a few. Yet today, so little of this data is being used, as to render most sourcing systems little more than a best buy table, with intermediaries relying instead upon their own knowledge of where to place a client.
If intermediaries are going to the trouble of collecting and storing large quantities of data on their clients, then the technology platforms they use to help select that client the right product should be capable of delivering truly accurate recommendations.
If accurate sourcing systems can save an intermediary the time and effort they put into failed applications before they submit them, how many more clients can they service, how much more business can they write? And in a world where proc. fees are increasingly related quality of submission, how much more income can be generated?
James Tucker is managing director of Mortgage 27
