The tie-in with Online Mortgage Advisor (OMA) goes live today, initially populating Bluestone’s Bluelink system with customer details from the OMA website.
However, it will see two-way information flow once the software is updated in January – allowing the lender to send updates directly in to the broker’s CRM system.
OMA refers customers onto brokers who specialise and regularly arrange mortgages in a particular field.
It works with 17 firms, with more expected to join shortly, and has a total of 83 advisers.
Speaking to Mortgage Solutions, David Torpey (pictured) said he was excited about the development with OMA and to grow its lending volumes via the interface.
“From today we will start to immediately see application information displayed in our Bluelink portal and auto-completed from the main OMA enquiry form,” he said.
“The first priority for us is to make sure we can speed up that process, make it much more efficient from the adviser’s and customer’s point of view.
“It’s our first integration with a broker firm and something we are keen to roll out for larger groups across the industry,” he added.
Broker tech hold-ups
Torpey noted that technology systems used by other broker firms was slowing up the process slightly and added that OMA had focused on bringing the development as quickly as possible.
For Salesforce systems, Torpey said the API integration process could be completed in around two-to-four weeks.
This was around six-to-eight weeks for other open-API platforms.
“It is for all of our products, and ultimately, we would like all of our intermediaries to be accessing us via a direct API, but that may depend a bit on the scale and size to make it cost efficient,” he continued.
Online Mortgage Advisor managing director Pete Mugleston explained that the process would mean a much simpler journey for brokers using the system.
He is starting by making it available to a couple of brokers first to ensure they can raise any potential issues.
But this has been a process long in the planning.
“We made the decision a couple of years ago to move onto a new platform,” he said.
“By investing in our own system we get the flexibility to do what we want. We forecasted we would want to be able to integrate and develop with other systems.
“We trialled about 20 CRMs and chose Salesforce as it has open API to pretty much any system you could dream of, and if not then someone will code it to do so,” he added.
