Hunt has invested an undisclosed personal sum in the company and Dashly founder Ross Boyd said he had become ‘so useful’, making him management was a ‘no-brainer.’
Mortgage club Paradigm represents 1290 mortgage firms and generated £4bn of gross completions in the six months to September this year.
The Dashly software, still being developed in the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) sandbox and due to go live in the New Year, is targeting consumer apathy. The firm said the technology could mean consumers “no longer have the need to visit a traditional price comparison portal again.”
However, Dashly founder Ross Boyd said this is not an exclusive distribution deal and the firm is out talking to a variety of other mortgage broker firms.
What it does
Dashly alerts consumers the moment it pays to take out another mortgage after all switching costs, including legal, product and early repayment fees.
This happens with no manual effort from the consumer and directs the client to a mortgage broker for advice, should they want it. The Dashly software is already regulated to offer mortgage advice.
Boyd said the majority of the industry has been focused on the idea of an Application Programming Interface (API)-driven one-click mortgage, but he doesn’t think speeding up the mortgage process is the critical issue that needs to be solved in housing transactions.
He said the customer benefit is key for us first and building up a loyal user base to give the firm negotiating sway with lenders to offer its clients incentives like product exclusives or allow lenders to bid for clients will be the push next year.
Bob Hunt, CEO, Paradigm Mortgage Services, said many of the announcements from digital entrants to the mortgage market have been ‘more style than substance.’
“Dashly by contrast, which taps into the open banking revolution, is rethinking the entire mortgage industry and its vision is one I immediately bought into. Dashly does something totally unique in that it puts the consumer first, embeds the broker in their clients’ financial lives and at the same time empowers lenders by enabling them to target the exact borrowers they want.”
“This is a company that optimises the loans of borrowers and lenders alike but at the same time puts brokers in a pivotal position. It’s a Standard Variable Rate killer, but one that causes no collateral damage to the rest of the industry.”
Boyd, Dashly founder, added: “To have someone as respected in the mortgage industry as Bob Hunt join the team and back Dashly is a major boost for everyone here and confirms that we are on the right track.”
He continued: “Bob’s understanding of the sector is second to none and for him to come onto the Dashly board is further validation of the customer-centric changes we have on our roadmap.
“Within the mortgage sector, the emerging technologies currently leveraging open banking, big data and AI are set to genuinely put customers first and fundamentally shift the balance of power to the consumer. But in Dashly neither the lender nor the broker loses out. In fact, both are empowered like never before.”
