Tech trends in the mortgage industry in 2021

Tech trends in the mortgage industry in 2021

Today’s consumers have grown accustomed to doing banking transactions at the touch of a button as more and more day-to-day activities now take place online. They expect the home lending process to be simplified and digitised for convenience. For all these reasons and more, digital finance and other financial technology services are ramping up. 

The home loan process includes several inefficiencies, confusing paperwork, a lack of real time data, a maze of compliance and slow turnaround times. It takes days and even weeks to gather documents and get a reply from the bank which represents a patchwork of systems that are slow and inefficient. 

That makes the industry ready for change and disruption. That disruption is already happening and the potential for progress is enormous. Technology will bring huge opportunities as we work towards serving more customers and gaining widespread adoption. 

Future tech trends will be driven by five customer expectations – speed, seamlessness, convenience, personalisation and transparency. Let’s take a look at some of them. 

Online collaborative tools

The pandemic has, in a way, led to the unprecedented scientific experiment that happened worldwide. And it worked! Things continue to move online to Zoom and CRM platforms. There has also been an increase in acceptance of digital signatures such as DocuSign.  And we realise that we simply no longer need an office to do our job. Remote working has proven to be both possible and profitable. 

Automation

Everytime we visit a cash machine, that’s all work used to be done by bank tellers who back in the 60s and 70s used to spend most of their time counting your money either to take it from you or to give it back to you. Thanks to automation, we can focus on more cognitive and high-value tasks. Automation would significantly reduce the number of steps brokers need to complete and reduce unnecessary delays. The idea is saving time, freeing brokers and bankers from doing repetitive tasks, covering points of entry so they can focus on doing their jobs. 

Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI)

These might be the words that strike fear in the hearts of many people – fear of the unknown and what it’s potentially capable of. However, history has shown that whenever we faced a major shift in technological advances, we have developed and adapted right along with it.

These technologies can go a long way in facilitating the document-intensive process of applying for a home loan. They help process huge amounts of data to create useful insights and enhance the customer experience. Indeed, they make our jobs a whole lot easier and we can’t get enough of them. 

There are real-world applications like chatbots, automatic alerts and prompts for staff to take action, softwares that read payslips and other types of paperwork and many others. 

There is a lot to like about new lead management platforms like Effi that are enabling mortgage brokers to conduct businesses in real time using machine learning to automate a smooth and efficient end-to-end process from initiation through processing and settlement – a key benefit for broker businesses that find their bottom line impacted by inefficiencies. 

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

Future mortgage tech will focus on enhancing efficiency in the areas of data collection, collateral valuation, underwriting support, and communication. The use of application programming interfaces (API) helps ensure data accuracy and facilitate regulatory compliance. 

We are drawn to Effi’s recently launched product search API that allows brokers access to up-to-date home loan product information and product details across 114 lenders, such as who is eligible for the product, what type of loan it is, interest rates and comparison rates.  The good thing is that this open sharing of information helps brokers compare and recommend products in the best interests of their clients. 

We will continue to work with uncertainties, with the on-going challenge of the pandemic. We just need to adapt the best way we can, put in place efficiency programs and get on with growing our businesses.