While the use of sourcing systems was now common place, brokers had yet to embrace other tech such as web chat and integration functions that lenders had spent money on to speed up the mortgage journey, said Duncombe (pictured).
Lenders were balancing self-service options with humans to increase their lending capacity, the delegates were told. They were looking for areas where technology could take over the “heavy lifting” during the mortgage journey. But brokers needed to adapt to the technology that lenders had invested in instead of resisting tech in favour of outdated methods.
Speaking at The Mortgage and Protection Event in Salford yesterday, Duncombe said although the use of Accord’s web chat service was up on pre-pandemic levels it still only fielded 60 per cent of broker enquiries. Duncombe said a lack of trust in the accuracy of information being given through web chat, manned by the same staff who answer the phones, put intermediaries off using the channel which would deliver the same result but quicker.
Some brokers took to the phones after receiving a web chat answer to check if it was correct, increasing the amount of resources a lender needed to devote to answering queries.
And although a pre-population function for Accord’s Decision in Principle forms was available on all the main sourcing systems which would reduce keying time, Duncombe said broker use of the tech was “very low”.
Refusing to use such software, he added, could either lead to the loss of a customer to a more efficient broker or lender or the shrinking of BDM teams who would have to be called back to man telephone calls because brokers will not use web chat.
“Be careful what you wish for,” said Duncombe. “If you want your BDMs and other people you interact with to be there within seconds at the end of a phone we’ll have to take them all off the road and sit them in call centres so they can pick up the phone as quickly as possible.”
Duncombe added that lenders should also take heed, as those firms that failed to offer efficient mortgage technology to their brokers would lose business.
