One of the current challenges for mortgage brokers is that you don’t just compete with other mortgage brokers when it comes to delivering your clients a service experience that exceeds their expectations – you compete with other industries as well.
Your clients will be used to getting what they want, on their terms, when they want it – so how do you match these expectations with a traditional advice model?
Keeping up with the changing world of client engagement doesn’t have to mean sinking significant investment into advancing your technology, but it’s certainly true that technology can help.
A key element of delivering an experience that exceeds your clients’ expectations is by providing them with choice as to how they would to prefer to engage with you. Do they want a face-to-face meeting in their own home? Do they want a phone call? Or would they prefer to complete a mini fact-find online ahead of any conversation?
In taking a more flexible approach to the way you engage with your clients you also need to be confident that you have access to the information you need to provide the advice they require at your fingertips – and this is where technology comes in.
The research required to provide good advice stretches so much further than the limited price-driven lists of traditional sourcing systems, but there are tools that you can use to quickly and easily check on the options available to your clients when it comes to factors like criteria and affordability.
These tools mean that you can always demonstrate value to your clients, even if it has to happen while you are sitting with them in their home, based on just a few questions.
For example, the most common first question amongst many of your clients is likely to be ‘how much can I borrow?’. A quick mental calculation based on indicative income multiples is no longer sufficient to provide accurate affordability results, but a tool, like MBT Affordability, can provide instant access to affordability calculations from more than 30 lenders, which means that you can demonstrate in-depth research and provide your clients with an answer in a matter of seconds.
Carrying out this level of research would have previously taken hours and so would not be feasible to deliver in an environment where you are talking live with your clients to need to respond with answers quickly. And so, this type of accessible tool enables you to engage with your clients with confidence in a way that suits them.
Lewis Lenssen is managing director at Mortgage Broker Tools
