The Intermediary – November 2025 - Flipbook - Page 22
T E C H N O L O GY
In focus
The need for ease
cannot be ignored
W
hen you’re
working day
in, day out, it’s
sometimes too
easy to forget
to take a step
back and notice the bigger picture.
The usefulness of this exercise is
particularly true when it comes to
assessing change.
We oen talk about change in the
context of what is happening now, but
decisions made years ago can oen
materially affect borrowers, brokers
and lenders alike years later.
In 2022, when the Truss-Kwarteng
double act delivered their miniBudget, it was a very serious wake-up
call for lenders, which were faced with
an immediate and significant swing in
their cost of funds.
The only way to deal with it was
to withdraw hundreds of products
overnight and take the days it took to
reprice and relaunch. There’s a lesson
it’s worth remembering here – there
were two very clear insights that
moment provided for our industry.
The first was certainty of funds. The
second, speed.
I’d argue that another component
has emerged since then – once,
securing money was the only game
in town, but today speed is not the
only important consideration when
an adviser is choosing where to take
their client.
Today, the task of submiing
business has to be efficient. Buyers
are, quite understandably, growing
increasingly impatient with the house
purchase process. It’s clunky, takes
months without any obvious – to them
– reasons, and that lands squarely on
the broker.
Invest in better
I’ve said before that, for the majority
of lenders in the UK, there is a
rapidly rising and unignorable need
to work out how to meet demand
more efficiently.
20
The Intermediary | November 2025
A recent survey carried out by
Noingham Building Society revealed
that two out of five intermediaries said
the mortgage process is the same or
slower than it was two years ago.
A third said lenders needed to invest
in beer technology to streamline
the application process and help
borrowers secure their homes
more quickly.
This scratches the surface of the
issues they are dealing with day-today. There is even a question around
how delays and inefficiencies in the
mortgage application and completion
process square with the Consumer
Duty rules.
‘Good outcomes’ doesn’t sound like
stressed and anxious clients, desperate
for clarity that their application will
be approved so they don’t lose the
home they want to buy suddenly.
Next year, there is due to be a boom
in the amount of refinancing the
market will need to deal with – I’ve
heard various industry pundits say
remortgage and product transfers will
outnumber purchase lending in 2026
for the first time.
I have two things to say on this.
The first is that there are going to be
hundreds of thousands of borrowers
who face a massive payment shock
when their 5-year fix expires. These
are people whose last experience
of going through the mortgage
application process was when the
Bank of England base rate was 0.25%.
It’s now 4% and may or may not be cut
next year.
The panic they are going to be
feeling when they have to go through
refinancing will be palpable. Brokers
will be the ones manging that
anxiety, and prolonging it as a result
of inefficient application systems
that have been underinvested in for
years? It’s not what lenders want to be
associated with.
Brokers know this – and their
irritation with lenders that cannot
provide an efficient process and
JERRY MULLE
is UK managing director
at Ohpen
Buyers are [...]
growing increasingly
impatient with the house
purchase process”
certainty for their clients within a
reasonable timeframe is growing.
I read a recent article on the BBC
which quoted a broker who said,
explicitly, that lenders have not
invested in upgraded IT services, the
delays that result really impact his
clients at an already stressful time,
and even that “geing a mortgage
today takes far longer than it did 20 or
30 years ago.”
A 2023 study from Market Financial
Solutions found that 64% of borrowers
struggled with stress and anxiety
during the mortgage process. For
first-time buyers, it was a shocking
8%. Around half of those surveyed
said lenders should be offering more
support and communication about
product changes. Seven out of 10
said using a broker felt ‘essential’
just to cope.
The time is now
It’s almost three years later, and if
anything, I’d argue the situation has
deteriorated rather than improved.
Whether the market is busy or not,
inefficiency costs everyone time and
money. It also causes intermediaries
stresses and strains that are
unnecessary.
Today, ease and speed are what
brokers demand of lender systems,
and they’re voting with their feet. ●
