Help your bottom line with better lending practices and upgrade your digital mortgage customer journey
The great pandemic and work-from-home revolution have meant we’ve all had to rethink our relationships with the homes we live in. Things like room for an office or a bigger garden, which didn’t seem necessary in the past, have risen in priority. The result? An increasing number of people are now in the market to upgrade, move, or otherwise re-assess their living arrangements, which has led to movement in the housing market. And for banks and similar financial institutions, that really means one thing: mortgages.
Naturally, with wariness about too many in-person meetings still in the air, banks and other financial institutions know they need to adapt to their customers’ expectations, the biggest of which is access to a user-friendly digital alternative to the traditional face-to-face mortgage broker. One way to make sure your digital alternative has a positive impact not just on your customers but also on your bottom line is to streamline the entire mortgage lending process.
We’ve listed six ways that can help you upgrade your digital mortgage customer journey:
Focus on the journeys and sub-journeys that matter. An intelligent self-service strategy can go a long way to ensuring your customers feel empowered to make crucial decisions. To truly customize the mortgage customer journey, remember to take different personas into account, taking care to match your services to their expectations.
For instance, a lot of younger customers are very comfortable with taking matters into their own hands and can take all the necessary steps to obtain a decision in principle without ever speaking with a live agent. Older and some more vulnerable customers, on the other hand, particularly those who may have non-standard needs, may start the process digitally, but may want the extra assurance talking to a person can provide, whether this is in-person or by video call. As the service provider, it’s your job to provide an accessible solution for all your touchpoints.
Automating processes can decrease risk by reducing human error, as well as by utilizing already available data when assessing an applicant’s credit quality.
This can be done through machine learning algorithms, which can integrate multiple data sources in your risk analysis. This results in more robust and more accurate risk-scoring, while also shortening the time to make a decision on loan viability. You can have almost instant approval, which means you’ll be able to lock in your customer much more quickly.
In this day and age, everything is about data, and the actionable insights you can glean from them. Consider that each of your applicants will have to input a tranche of required information for you to process and conduct an accurate risk assessment on the viability of a potential loan. With open banking becoming the norm, that data can be used to personalize for your customer in much the same way Netflix or Amazon might personalize movie or book recommendations.
If you can use the data securely and intelligently, you can help your customers access products and services that are much more aligned and suited to their needs, giving them tailored loans with costs and conditions made to fit their profiles. For instance, a user who has already taken out a green mortgage might be more likely to be interested in a vetted ethical savings account. And a customer who has a mortgage may also be interested in a home renovation personal loan down the line.
Many providers make the mistake of merely transposing their old processes into an online platform and calling it a day. A simple example, for instance, is the practice of asking for the same piece of information multiple times in the journey. There is no real need to do this in a digital process, as you can already export all the relevant data.
Another example is when a user is asked to wait for a call to confirm identity. While this may be necessary in a small number of cases, most of the time, good OCR tools, combined with technology such as face recognition and liveness detection, are all you need to detect fraudulent use of photos or masks in the KYC process.
And remember, a truly digital experience can also mean faster loans for your existing customer base, as you already have their data.
Third-party partnerships can help you scale your offerings in a much shorter time period, as they already have the expertise you need, and you won’t have to start from scratch. Look to established and reputable companies, with a solid portfolio of strong clients, to supplement your capabilities.
With the right partners, you can integrate electronic signatures, digital document processors, face recognition, liveness detection, and personalized customer journeys into an accessible, convenient, and well-designed digital platform. With a partner like FintechOS, you can even do all of this without needing to replace legacy tech.
For a lot of younger mortgage seekers, a key expectation is that at least part of the loan application and onboarding process will be digital. Another is that the terms of lending will be a balance of borrowers’ rights as well as their obligations. Ensure that you have specified your customer personas and tailored solutions to match their needs.
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If you’re looking for more information on how we can help lenders streamline and update their mortgage customer journey, download our report on the ideal mortgage application and watch our webinar on the future of mortgages. You can also book a demo.
