Second Charge Lending
Robo-advice is not a broker-killer – Salentino
Guest Author:
Tony Salentino, director of Complete FSWe are living in an age of huge changes in the mortgage industry and most of them for the better.
The first sourcing systems tried to exploit the internet over dial up.
Now today’s, ultra-fast sourcing includes an ever-increasing depth of criteria and steps towards full API integration.
When we add online submission, downloadable documentation, the integration of electronic identification and Open Banking, the mortgage process is going through its biggest revolution since we were hand writing application forms and faxing them to lenders.
The current bogeyman buzzword is robo-advice.
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But for all the hype, we are a long way from the all-singing, all-dancing replacement for human advisers.
However, while robo-advice is not the all-conquering ‘broker killer’ that it has been purported to be, we actually owe a debt of gratitude to those companies who are pushing the technology.
Why? Because it should be a wakeup call for every adviser in the market.
We cannot ignore what technology can do for all of us.
Take your customers
Advisers must embrace the technology on offer to remain relevant and help them improve their businesses and enhance, rather than replace, personal contact.
Anyone not staying very close to their existing clients and contacting them regularly is going to find they will go elsewhere, and the internet is the first place they will look.
Be under no illusion, lenders, robo-advisers and fellow brokers are actively seeking to take your customers away from you.
Make technology an ally rather than treating it as an enemy and spend as much time on existing customers as on seeking new ones.
By making sure customers appreciate why human experience, empathy and close contact will always trump robo-advice, the future is rosy for advisers in 2019.