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BSA conference: Atom Bank eyes execution-only mortgage applications

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  • 04/05/2017
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BSA conference: Atom Bank eyes execution-only mortgage applications
Atom Bank is considering an execution only mortgage application process for customers but confirmed it has no plans to add advisers or a salesforce to its organisation.

The bank noted that while brokers were supportive of its approach, they were having problems getting their heads around how the technology worked.

And the bank is also expected to announce the next big stage of its expansion in June.

Speaking at the Building Societies Association conference, Atom Bank director of retail mortgages Maria Harris was asked about whether Atom would seek to remove brokers from the mortgage process.

She said: “We believe that customers who have advice should have independent whole of market advice, and that means an intermediary.

“So we don’t have any advisers in our bank at all, we don’t sell any products, we don’t have any targets or cash bonuses or do cross-selling at all.

“Our philosophy is that where a customer needs mortgage advice we will always send them to an intermediary.”

 

Execution only

But she noted that was an “interesting dynamic” for the lender around execution only options as many customers would expect to be able to apply for mortgages on their own.

“Where you have a customer who is coming to the end of their deal and their circumstances haven’t changed or they don’t want advice again, the customer will have an expectation around self-service, and our offer is a self-service app, so that’s a bridge we’re going to have to cross fairly soon,” she continued.

“We haven’t made a hard or fast decision on that yet, but we have decided we’re not going to go down the advised model – so for us advice will always be intermediary led.”

 

Hand-holding

Harris also revealed how brokers were reacting to the lender’s market disrupting proposition, explaining that they needed “some time to get their head around how this technology works, how to use it and how to describe it to the customer”.

“So we’re doing a lot of hand-holding and a lot of education right now,” she said.

“When you talk to intermediaries, outside of work they are using this technology in their social life, they do everything in their social lives using this technology, it just hasn’t made the transition into their offices yet, so that’s an interesting journey to take them on.”

The annual BSA conference continues today in London.

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