First off, we know that the last 18 months have been a real toughie for the mortgage adviser industry. The legacy of the Liz Truss budget of October 2022 resulted in a constant upward spiral of mortgage increases, leading to an ever-changing minefield of competing offers from mortgage lenders, before a series of downward readjustments in 2024.
The net result has been a chaotic period, understatedly described as “challenging” by Bon Hunt from the Society of Mortgage Professionals in this article for FT Adviser.
And, arguably, we’re still not out of the woods, with fears of t a tariff-based "Trumpsession" placing another question mark over the prospect of any further falls in interest rates.
All of which makes the job of a mortgage adviser one where we all have to continually keep our eyes on the radar for ever changing offers from lenders, and the ongoing ebb and flow of buyer and seller confidence which, according to the latest Barclays Property Insights survey, is at a six month low.
So, given the marketplace conditions that we’re all working in, and the pressures that mortgage advisers are under to remain FCA Compliant, here’s a run through of our Top 5 time saving hacks - each based on a specific feature of the Binder mortgage adviser portal - and each designed to help you claw back valuable time and achieve that all-important work-life balance.
The fundamental cornerstone of every successful mortgage application is a Fact Find. But for too long, mortgage advisers have had to use generic financial services fact finding tools which don’t reflect the specific data collection needs essential for the questions that mortgage lenders will be asking you further down the line.
The Binder Fact Find is a significant new feature which we believe is an absolute game changer for our industry because the entry fields are minimised to ensure you’re not wading through pages of unnecessary information. Also, we’ve created an additional ‘save and store’ feature which enables you to securely store your client’s information for future use on other mortgage applications.
Each of our Fact Finding features also play a key role helping you demonstrate due diligence around fully understanding your clients’ needs and circumstances - critical to demonstrating both compliance and Consumer Duty.
Juggling new business, compliance and the additional pressures of Consumer Duty bring so many additional layers to your daily workflow. And with so many lenders competing against each other on deals, we know how easy it is to feel overwhelmed.
The Binder solution is the way our system highlights the caseloads that need your attention first. Plus, if your clients are active on the portal when you are, you can make immediate contact to attract their attention.
We all know they’re the unsung heroes of our industry, so with the Binder organisational management system you can empower your admin team to work on the back office progression of each case that you’re working on.
With varying levels of access, you remain in complete control of who sees what, freeing up valuable time for you to spend either face to face with clients or in developing your bank of new business.
One of the key things that eats into your time is chasing clients for important documentation - and maintaining the flow of information from one party to the next. It only takes a succession of delays and, before you know it, you’ve accumulated possibly a week in lost time over the lifetime of each case. This can have a significant impact on the entire property transaction.
With the Binder Client Portal mortgage advisers can select the key documents they need from their clients and get them returned with speed where they’re subsequently encrypted and stored securely for both the lifetime of the case, and for any supporting evidence for compliance.
In addition, our new e-signature feature means that those critical authorisation milestones can now be fast-forwarded with compliant, digital authentication. Again, this can save both significant time at those vital crunch points in the progression of each case.
Staying in touch. It’s fundamental to maintaining the momentum of every client mortgage application. But it can become unwieldy and, sometimes, overwhelming. Emails, WhatsApp messages, texts, phone calls - even the occasional printed letter, all play their part in disrupting your workflow.
But being able to evidence the conversations and advice that go hand in hand with each mortgage recommendation are essential for compliance.
So, we created the Binder Live Chat feature which enables you to have real-time secure conversations with your clients, with every conversation securely stored against all their supporting documentation. No more juggling a multitude of different conversations and wondering how to file them, either physically or digitally.
Old habits die hard, and we know ourselves how existing work patterns are sometimes difficult to break. This includes working with the industry-standard financial services platform Intelliflo .
So, one of our key development priorities was ensuring that Binder would seamlessly interface with this platform - to counteract that potential trepidation around “making the leap” from one system to another.
In practice then, with our proven and tested IO integration you get all the benefits of Binder within an established user framework. Therefore, If you're already an IO user, then Binder's seamless integration with IO makes using the portal an easy transition.
Binder delivers optimum time saving gains when it's put through its paces, and becomes a natural partner for every aspect of your mortgage adviser work.
So, we’ve created a £70pcm per user price point that, we believe, makes Binder a really affordable, value-for-money investment - not least because there's no up front admin or joining fees, and there’s no limit to the number of cases you can download or add to the portal.
Here’s what Binder users are now saying:
“Binder’s integration with Intelliflo is first class. It allows mortgage advisers to interact with a tool specifically designed for mortgages, with all the data being synced with the back office”. Mike Phillips, Head of ASHL.
“Binder is really useful, and makes processing/amending cases easier than it would have been if we were just using our back office CRM systems. I particularly prefer the adding and creating of actual mortgage cases which just synchronises to our back office with a single click” Aidan - Ernest Grany Mortgages
Discover the Binder time-saving difference for yourself. Simply click here to Book your 45 min demo today
