Mortgage applications with Nationwide are expected to become faster for brokers as Britain’s biggest building society trials new technology.
The Society has just launched a ‘sandbox’ pilot that enables third party systems to connect with Nationwide’s credit risk and back office systems via APIs and aims to speed up the process by reducing the time it takes mortgage brokers to source and submit client applications.
Currently brokers use separate systems to collect client information, source their mortgage and then submit the application. As the systems are all separate, the process can be inefficient due to duplication of work since information needs to be inputted multiple times. The use of APIs will mean the clients information can be input just once and shared between systems.
The Society has worked closely with a range of third parties over the last few months as it continues to develop and support the latest technological innovations in the broker market as part of a commitment to further enhance its sales process and broker experience.
Technology has redefined how people want to be served and the Society is investing to stay ahead of expectation. Last year Nationwide announced it would be investing £4.1 billion in technology over a period of five years. In the last 12 months it has invested significantly into its intermediary technology, including the launch of soft footprints, the use of Optical Character Recognition to automate proof checking and speed up timescales and a series of enhancements to case tracking to give brokers better insight into how their customers application are progressing.
Following these enhancements, Nationwide has been awarded the ‘Five Star’ Award at the Financial Adviser Service Awards.
Ian Andrew, Director of Intermediary Relationships at Nationwide Building Society, said: “Technological advances in all sectors increases people’s expectations of what they want from a business and it is important we are able to serve brokers on their terms. Brokers generate a significant proportion of our mortgage lending, so its important we also invest in our services.
“The launch of our API sandbox is a significant moment for Nationwide and the sector and we’re excited to be innovating and learning in partnership with a number of third parties in a test ahead of rolling out this new technology to the whole market. We hope this gives brokers back valuable time to help more clients or focus on other activity. We continue to look at ways we can improve the service offered to brokers both now and in the future.”
