Back in 2005, YouTube was launched, Apple delivered the iPod shuffle, and autonomous automobiles and robotic assistants have been revealed for the primary time.
And, on Monday 7 November, I joined the mortgage business.
My first function was as head of Halifax’s Intermediary Service Centre in Glasgow. Our expertise consisted of native brokers popping in with a brown manila folder, with a sticker on the entrance confirming their community or mortgage membership.
How have we gone from 13-week completions to 22 weeks?
The folder contained a hand-written software kind and copies of buyer paperwork. Every web page needed to be stamped and licensed.
For brokers additional afield, functions have been despatched by put up or fax machine, so we had a workforce of individuals devoted to opening the put up, making a folder and system report, and scanning faxes whereas checking that each web page had been licensed accurately. Any pages lacking would outcome within the folder being held as pending till the entire software was prepared for evaluate.
The folder would make its method via every processing workforce, with paperwork added as duties have been accomplished. And the exercise record was ticked off with an replace name to the dealer as providers have been instructed or checks accredited. Our workplace whiteboard had a written tracker of post-offer instances with their anticipated ‘funds launch’ date, and we labored in the direction of a mean of 12 to 13 weeks for completion.
The buyer expertise was recognized as sub-optimal with a variety of poor outcomes and frustrations
Business growth managers would exit on visits, armed with paper copies of our present mortgage merchandise and a floppy disk for every agency to add our newest standards and software kind.
Document heavy
Fast-forward to right this moment and our technological progress is clear to see. Online software techniques, real-time sourcing for merchandise and standards, automated checks, on the spot valuations, surveys and conveyancing instruction, and case-tracking portals.
So how have we gone from a mean of lower than 13 weeks to over 22 weeks on homebuying completions?
Delivering a contemporary, fit-for-purpose expertise for patrons must be the widespread purpose
A analysis report printed by the Digital Property Market Steering Group (DPMSG) has discovered that homebuying has turn into more and more complicated, with as much as eight business events concerned and over 130 paperwork generated on a mean transaction. The buyer expertise was recognized as sub-optimal with a variety of poor outcomes and frustrations.
The impact of this convoluted and document-heavy course of is additionally felt by the business — as an illustration, velocity of transactions impacting cashflow and certainty of completion; excessive charges of fallthrough and delays; unprecedented ranges of fraud and fee intervention; incomplete information; keying errors; a number of duplication; unsecure strategies of sharing delicate paperwork; and little or no management for patrons or business members.
The HomeOwners Alliance annual report in 2024 indicated that prospects nonetheless didn’t actually perceive the conveyancing course of. And the Open Property Data Association has discovered that 45.5% of homebuyers anticipate to trade contracts inside one to 2 months when the truth is that 46% of transactions take three to 6 months.
We should convert our analogue and unstructured information, techniques and processes into one thing that works for everybody
Yet the options to those issues appear manifestly apparent, particularly in a world the place digitisation is one thing we take without any consideration. Smartphones and on-line ‘on a regular basis’ have set expectations round comfort, interplay and customer-centric options.
The prevalence of biometric authentication, digital wallets and contactless funds has elevated confidence and value; Open Banking UK simply reached 15 million customers.
Prerequisites
The DPMSG recognized three conditions to drive innovation and apply this digitisation to the homebuying and mortgage course of: belief, incentives and digitisation.
Trust is a vital think about how successfully we work as an business. That’s private belief between one another and between us and our prospects; but additionally cognitive belief, the place we are able to depend on the information we’re working with, be assured of its authenticity and provenance, and stake our popularity on that information being secure and safe.
The impact of this convoluted and document-heavy course of is additionally felt by the business
Incentives are a difficult and emotive topic for the property market. But, if we’re not working in the direction of a standard purpose or coalescing round a greater buyer expertise, we’ll proceed to battle vested pursuits, protectionism and siloed methods of working.
But digitisation is step one. We should convert our analogue and unstructured information, techniques and processes into one thing that works for everybody. And we should clear up the dearth of standardisation and governance that stops us safely and securely accessing, trusting and sharing information from its official supply.
Transformation isn’t simple, however delivering a contemporary, fit-for-purpose expertise for patrons must be the widespread purpose.
Maria Harris is chair of the Open Property Data Association
This article featured within the October 2025 version of Mortgage Strategy.
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