A growing number of lenders have started contacting customers in advance of deals expiry, and it seems this trend will continue.
Half of lenders are offering or are about to offer a service where customers can remortgage on a self-service basis, IRESS’ Mortgage Survey has found.
A growing number of lenders have already started contacting customers in advance of their deals expiring to offer them a product transfer.
Henry Woodcock, principal mortgage consultant at IRESS, said: “In terms of the digital journey half of lenders are offering or are about to offer a self-service mortgage aimed at remortgaging; streamlining the mortgage process.”
He added: “Some brokers are starting to take a digital journey themselves.
“They will handle the first part of the journey for the consumer digitally and then push it through to the lender.
“In the next couple of years we expect that process to become digitalised using third party services, getting rid of paper – streamlining not just remortgaging but all of the sales process.”
Lenders are clearly upping their game when it comes to adopting technology, as on mobile devices four in five provide affordability checks and two thirds offer a decision in principle.
Woodcock went on to say he expects the rise of ‘artificial intelligence’ – where cases are monitored at every stage of the journey – to transform the market over the next few years.
He thinks lenders, one by one, will start releasing data showing where certain customer types tend to be rejected from getting a mortgage.
Then using that data they could then provide a more prompt service to customers, as Woodcock summed up “an early no is better than a late no” if a case is rejected.
