10 Pieces of Technology every Mortgage Firm should be using….

by Freddie Savundra - Founder & CEO • 14 September 2022

Forget blockchain technology, forget Big Data & Artificial Intelligence for just a second. Let’s look at some of the most practical technology in the mortgage sector that your business needs to be using.

If you’re not, bring the techies out from the Dungeon, as it’s time to level up your business. We’ve outlined some of the core technology below that both Meet Parker and many mortgage advisers live by.

1. API Mortgage App Submission

Much like the NASA Moon Mission, it seemed to be continually put off by many. “I’m too busy”, “Not the right lenders”, “My CRM isn’t connected” etc etc.

Then we suddenly have lift off, and it’s all systems go. App Submission platforms have now grown to a staggering scale and feature more than just smaller Building Societies and specialist lenders. Many of the Top 10 and some of the Big 6 now actively participate in this API technology. This is now a real game changer for many advice businesses.

With just a few clicks you can submit a mortgage application that goes straight to the lender (assuming you have sourced and completed the factfind / CRM correctly).

There are a few examples with Twenty7tec, Mortgage Brain & IRESS all championing this area for the adviser. No longer wasting time on the rekey of factfind data into mortgage applications, is the biggest time saving metric your business has.

2. E-payments

If you take client fees or charge a one-off arrangement fee, make sure you are using a digital payment system. Stripe is the best product on the market here, by a country mile. With rates starting at 1.4%, it has one of the most seamless UI/UX in the Market and is a developers dream to work with. This one gets our vote.

3. E-Signatures

Not the most common request but one every business needs to be prepared for. No need to print another document off to sign and scan. Docusign and Adobe Sign are (in our view) expensive and overkill. We’ve given our votes to Hello Sign & AlphaTrust. Both are simple, cheap to use and again a pleasure to build with and integrate.

4. Secure Mail

Everyone hates secure mail, but it’s there to do one job and one job alone – protect. We’ve given our vote to StayPrivate/ RMail here, it has a nice secure add on and means the client only has to do a 4 digit pin to access the secure email. Egress has a nice solution, it’s on the pricier side and still requires quite a lot of user setup.

5. CRM

There are a few really good examples of CRM’s in the Mortgage Space. At face value, you need to look at what you use your CRM for. Not everyone can afford a bespoke Salesforce setup and it’s probably got 90% more functionality than you will ever use. View as many as you can and find one that fits your needs. Purely on a technical and user level, HubSpot has to be a favourite here. It’s got a free trial, comes with a marketing automation tool, and it’s again a well published developer application.

6. Email Security

Protecting your business and effectively journaling emails in case disaster strikes, Mimecast is a full package offering here.

7. Websites and Chatbots

Your website should scream data capture and should be the gateway to capturing more leads, if it isn’t, you need to look at why. We think we’re pretty good here….

8. Email, Mailshots

Tough one to pick but we’ve given our vote to MailChimp here. It’s user friendly, economic, great value and connects with everything. There are a few notable mentions for firms like Klaviyo and Eloqua, but in reality MailChimp nearly has it all. We say nearly, watch this space….

9. Social Media

It's a bit of a minefield out there on social and you have to very much, be in it to win it. Regular content, consistency, adding value, engaging with your connections, followers and customers are all key here. Having the right tools will help tremendously! Hootsuite is is very good, although our current favourite is Buffer. It’s very clean, simple, cheap and intuitive. Perfect for any small to medium business in our mind.

10. Life Insurance Cross Sell

With our techie hat firmly on, there isn’t another firm that can do what iPipeline does in this space. Lifequote clearly comes close, but iPipeline’s rich data feed and API means a great data driven solution. We think it’s great, it’s the baseline for all our insurance solutions.

This list is formed from Meet Parker’s own experiences, conversations and feedback from advisers. It is only a small snapshot of technology in the industry and no recommendations are being made for the use of any product, supplier or system.