The number of documents requested per borrower has risen sharply over the last year – how do advisers deal with the volume?
The number of documents requested by banks has risen sharply over the last year according to document sharing service FileInvite, with an average of three or four additional documents requested from each borrower.
As banks become more selective and the mortgage process becomes ever more complex, advisers also are dealing with larger piles of documentation in the ‘fact find’ stage of the process. As a result, more advisers have been turning to online platforms originally geared towards different sectors to help streamline the long and complex procedure of securing a loan.
“We have a large volume of documentation that goes through our platform, and looking at the last half of 2018, we can see that the number of documents per loan application has increased by around 35%,” FileInvite CEO James Sampson told NZ Adviser.
“That lines up with the lot of the feedback what we get from advisers, specifically around the complexity of what the financial lending institutions are requesting. Off the back of the Royal Commission, we’ve seen increased requests for validation of living expenses, and fact finding has been a lot more rigorous. We’ve tried to digitise that fact finding process as much as possible.”
Sampson says the original idea was geared towards the web design sector, but the overwhelming response from mortgage advisers means the company has now developed an adviser-specific add-on which focuses on the mortgage application process. The majority of the company’s business now focuses on the mortgage broker space.
“When we went to market with our original platform which was focused on web design, the mortgage brokers jumped on it as the documentation process was their biggest headache,” he said. “We’ve really worked closely with the advisers since then and listened to their feedback, and now we’ve developed features specifically for the mortgage broker space. “
“It’s also all about client experience and referrals, so you want your client to have a seamless an experience as possible,” he added. “Being able to offer a digital experience where a client can complete documentation and digitally sign everything, and it’s all within a secure environment – that keeps everything out of broker inboxes, which will ultimately also help with compliance.”
