The Intermediary – January 2026 - Flipbook - Page 66
T E C H N O L O GY
Opinion
Next-generation data
services have arrived
W
e were
recently able
to announce
an important
partnership
with Yorkshire
Building Society. The society has
taken a significant step forward in
its digital transformation journey
with the adoption of our Lender
Hub platform – a move that enables
the society to integrate real-time
property and energy efficiency data to
enable instantaneous, risk-adjusted
decisioning.
The partnership marks a notable
moment not only for the Yorkshire
Building Society, but for the wider
market, as lenders increasingly
turn to richer datasets and smarter
workflow tools to improve outcomes
in mortgage lending.
For a sector navigating complex
regulatory demands, rising climaterisk scrutiny, and shiing customer
expectations, the ability to access
trustworthy property intelligence at
pace is becoming essential. Yorkshire
Building Society’s decision to expand
its digital capabilities with Cotality is
indicative of a broader industry shi.
For Yorkshire Building Society, the
partnership aligns directly with its
transformation strategy. It has been
steadily modernising its mortgage
processes in recent years, with a
sustained focus on improving member
experience while strengthening
overall risk management.
Incorporating EPC data into
mainstream decisioning is the next
step in this journey, not the end.
The deal will deliver both efficiency
and sustainability, but also plays
to broader lender priorities. As
intermediaries will know, mortgage
approvals are increasingly influenced
not just by valuation accuracy but
by the growing need to understand
how resilient a property may be to
tightening environmental standards.
Lenders are preparing for future
64
The Intermediary | January 2026
regulatory changes around energy
performance, while homebuyers
and remortgagers increasingly want
clarity on energy-efficiency costs.
Building societies like the Yorkshire
Building Society, with their memberled ethos and deep regional ties, are
particularly auned to this shi.
While the mortgage market has
long used data services, their role has
shied from passive analytics to active
enablers of the customer journey.
With the integration of Cotality’s
lender hub services, Yorkshire
Building Society gains access to
a system that blends advanced
modelling techniques with real-world
market data to produce valuations
in seconds.
These capabilities maer. Faster
valuation outcomes mean quicker
time to offer, fewer manual
interventions, and reduced reliance on
full physical inspections – particularly
in lower-risk scenarios. Data services
will also produce huge efficiencies for
all in the value chain when it comes to
managing and handling post valuation
queries. At a time when speed remains
a competitive differentiator for lenders
and a service expectation among
brokers, Data offers an important
lever for balancing precision with
efficiency.
Data services are not only about
speed. They support stronger risk
governance. By delivering valuation
estimates, comparables, confidence
scores and property aributes within
a unified workflow, lenders can
calibrate decisions with consistency.
A new climate
The integration of EPC information
and more granular energy-efficiency
indicators may ultimately prove just
as valuable. Lenders across the UK are
preparing for a mortgage landscape
where climate-risk assessments and
energy-performance transparency
become the norm. Even with shiing
Government timelines, the direction
MARK BLACKWELL
is COO at Cotality
of travel is unambiguous: beer data,
clearer reporting, and increasing
regulatory interest in heat demand,
insulation levels and carbon-reduction
pathways.
For brokers, this trend is already
filtering into conversations with
landlords, homeowners and
remortgagers seeking to understand
what their properties’ EPC profiles
mean for borrowing. For lenders, the
ability to view energy performance
characteristics at the point of
decisioning brings several advantages
from long-term risk modelling
and capital planning to supporting
customers with retrofit pathways.
For brokers working with Yorkshire
Building Society, the announcement
signals a further enhancement of the
society’s service proposition. Faster
valuations mean quicker movement
from application to offer which is a
benefit that is particularly relevant in
competitive purchase chains or where
customers need clarity on borrowing
capacity at speed.
It also reflects a wider paern
intermediaries should watch closely:
the increasing fusion of valuation
intelligence, energy data and risk
analytics within mainstream
mortgage processing.
As lenders adopt richer datasets,
brokers may increasingly encounter
more nuanced underwriting
questions around EPC status, retrofit
potential, property comparables and
automated confidence scores. Being
fluent in these areas will become a
differentiator in its own right.
Ultimately, the partnership
between Yorkshire Building Society
and Cotality underscores a shi in
how lenders think about property
risk, sustainability and operational
performance. ●
