FR: What are the benefits of being a Directly Authorised broker?
The main benefit I see is the freedom to operate your business in the ways that you see fit without having some control over you by a network principal. This has to be balanced with the need to have a robust business model and all the compliance controls in place to meet your regulatory responsibilities to the FCA. A good DA firm will outsource relevant business areas such as compliance to an outside firm rather than try to do everything themselves. After all being an AR is in effect outsourcing many areas to a network, so in some ways being an AR or DA is similar. As lenders have started to recognise that DA intermediaries produce just as good quality business as AR’s, proc fees to DA’s are increasing thus also negating any perceived financial benefits of being an AR.
For some intermediaries being an AR suits their model and requirements perfectly but they feel they may have to change networks periodically due to issues they may see at their network. The cost, freezing of commissions and time consuming issue of changing networks can be stopped if they get the help of a good Mortgage Club in becoming a DA and then using that club for all help and assistance to keep them profitable and compliant with access also to a range of products and benefits.
FR: What would your advice be to advisers who are unaware of the benefits of technology?
Technology is at the heart of all we do in the world we now live in. Just think of how we use mobile phones to text, email, use the internet etc. We can even run our domestic heating systems from our mobiles. The younger generation especially, are used to instant communication and knowledge at their fingertips. So, in the intermediary market, unless advisers embrace and use technology they will eventually start to lose ground and fall behind customers’ expectations.
It takes longer now to process mortgages and meet regulatory responsibility so use technology to automate as many processes as possible and make admin easy, which should then allow you more time engaging with customers in a selling capacity. Try not to be a slave to process and instead you become the master in charge.
Advisers should take time out to invest in themselves and start the journey to use technology to its full potential. Get help from friends and colleagues and even engage with experts who can demonstrate their systems. Talk to other advisers, have an open mind, don’t get stuck in your ways, upgrade to newer systems, move on and make sure you take evolutionary not revolutionary steps.
FR: Have you got any big plans or exciting news coming up that you can tell us about?
MCI Club was set up primarily to offer mortgage club products and services to the users of the Mortgage Keeper CRM system. As such our members tend to be active users of technology and appreciate the efficiencies that can be created by using technology to its full potential.
We have plans to give some exciting new benefits to the members of MCI Club which will allow their customers to have their own customer portal set up so that they can see at anytime a view of what the adviser is doing on their mortgage case. Not only will that save time in not having to answer on-going telephone calls from customers but it will give them the ability to speedily upload and download various documents securely.
Plans are also in place for a massive time-saving initiative using pre-population of information and data capture so that the adviser gets their job done quicker with less frustration.
The additional and really exciting news is that we have now turned this also into a state of the art sales tool whereby the portal will automatically recognise what products the customer bought at the time of the mortgage and send new quotes and reminders to the customer for products they maybe should have had but for some reason didn’t. This will give multiple options as to how the customer can then interact with the adviser and in some cases sales can be made without the advisers involvement, so that valuable income can be made for the adviser for doing little or no work.
FR: What do you think the future holds for mortgage software?
Mortgage software will obviously evolve and experts are working on how even greater efficiencies can be implemented.
It is thought that, younger people expect technology benefits to be the norm and so speed of access and all information to be in one place 24/7 will be a must.
From a compliance perspective any regulator will expect mortgage software be installed and any adviser using paper-based systems will not find their dealings easy. More and more management information will be required and this can only effectively be produced by installing a leading CRM software system.
As competition increases between advisers those that are more effective will win over others. In addition, lenders will eventually want to make up their market share of the mortgage market and will be working on technology solutions to regain their competitive edge over the intermediary market. By advisers using a good Mortgage Software package, they at least can start to win and retain more customers from other intermediaries and lenders who have a direct lending arm.
FR: If you weren’t in financial services, what would you be doing?
Apart from the dream of being paid as a professional sportsman, I have always liked to get satisfaction from physically seeing a job well done such as DIY tasks, therefore I would probably try my hand at something like plumbing and save myself a fortune rather than paying someone else to hit a pipe with a hammer!
