Earlier in the year and subsequently, all during the ‘post-covid’ time frame we have been living in of late, it was easy to find, source, and apply for the best new mortgage deals for our clients with a reliable and trusted lender.
In fact, once the world reopened again lenders seemed to throw out attractive rates for fun in order to gain new business.
As whole of the market brokers, we rely on sourcing systems and technology to scour the market and find the cheapest deals based on our clients’ specific needs and preferences.
These systems have improved in leaps and bounds in the past five years or so with tech being one of the most used tools in a broker’s arsenal. So much so that sourcing the best deal for your client became an easy task.
Could Tech be More Hassle Than it’s Worth?
As we’ve seen of late though, swift changes in the market have led to the tech tools being slightly outdated. Some systems require manual input of new products overnight to keep up with the turnaround of lenders.
Lenders have pulled products at a moment’s notice only to re-introduce them at higher rates (or lower as we are seeing now – not widely reported might I add…) the next day.
Removal and re-introduction of products has always been common practice with lenders.
Often products are pulled when demand is high and service levels of underwriting and other teams start to slip within the lenders’ company, but this time, things have been different.
The combination of market uncertainty and lenders’ backlogs has meant sourcing the best deal has not been so easy. Add this to the changes within ONS data used by many a high street lender to factor in generic household bills and costings affecting your clients’ budget, newer brokers who rely on their technology and top-of-the-range sourcing systems have fallen short. Some products and lenders need to be found manually with industry knowledge playing a key role in this.
For those new to the industry, this upheaval will likely have been a real shock and a proper introduction to the mortgage world. We’ve found experienced brokers such as ours here at Agentis have been able to draw upon their skills and really work for their clients.
This could be through assessing their attitudes to risk by exploring more than just fixed rate products, understanding that smaller lenders may be able to help with niche and specialist incomes, or even that simply further research is needed for their clients who have come in to find the top deal.
Learning From This Period
Whilst things start to settle down within the financial markets and we look to the New Year, brokers can start to see the positives coming from this market shake-up.
Tech and its surrounding support systems will continue to grow and will continue to be a crucial part of sourcing mortgage products. We learn all we can with the technology updates and new systems thrown our way but ultimately we know that this is no substitute for connecting with our clients, knowing what other lenders and products are out there, researching the market as a whole, and understanding what real advice means.
If you are looking for help and advice arranging your first mortgage or next mortgage, please give us a call today.
