Speaking of how digitalisation in the industry might develop over time, the chief executive said he hoped to see more tailored mortgages in the next five years to give brokers time to work on the soft skills of the advising process.
He envisioned brokers going onto a sourcing system which would be likened to a bidding platform and entering client details. Lenders would then respond to say if it would be something they would lend on.
“As a broker you’re still looking for the same things such as whether it fits the criteria, but that bit at the start will get closer to individual pricing,” Reynolds (pictured) added.
While the offering may be tailored, Reynolds said there would still be some limitations to how fluid product ranges would be.
He added: “Individual pricing is what it might be called but whether it is actually individual is another thing. I’m sure there’ll still be 50 products coming from each lender.
“But instead of a broker saying it’s 3.99 per cent fixed for five years, the lender will come back and say it’s 3.98 per cent for this customer or 3.97 per cent fixed for that customer. We’ll get closer to that and open banking will help.”
Reynolds said: “Those things will allow the broker to do more of the advice process and more of the soft skills, asking what clients are trying to achieve and their aims. Then they’ll say, ‘let’s create the product that fits you’. They’ll create a product the client likes then put it out there and see which lenders are interested.”
Customer-centric technology
Generally, broker technology was moving towards serving the needs of borrowers rather than addressing back end operations and data entry speeds, Reynolds said.
He said he expected technology which enhances the advising process to be developed going forward, especially in light of the thousands of criteria changes during the pandemic.
Reynolds also said the rapid moving market would lead more borrowers to brokers for advice and reassurance.
“Clients are looking at brokers even more than before. They want that comfort because of those changes, they want that second opinion,” Reynolds added.
While robo-advice has not taken off as expected in the investment space where there was just one product and one person in the process, Reynold predicted it would also fail to dominate the mortgage market.
“It was always going to be a lot harder in the mortgage space. You’ve got two customers and a property. So, you’ve got three variables moving around, how do you create the artificial intelligence to manage all of that?”
“I wouldn’t say the pandemic has pushed back robo advice because I don’t think it was getting the traction people wanted. But [the pandemic has] made people realise that human interaction is important,” Reynolds said.
