Instant lending decisions - the future of mortgages

The mortgage market in today’s banking environment looks exponentially different to the market of just a couple of years ago. New technology start-ups are driving change, with service, speed, and efficiency the minimum requirements to be able to offer any mortgage offering. Today, achieving competitive advantage is dependent on a lot more than just being able to offer a mortgage product and companies need to adapt to this new environment. The gold standard in mortgages is the ability to offer an instant decision on a mortgage, with few banks able to claim this. United Trust Bank (UTB) is now one of the banks that does this.

What was the problem?

In today’s technology driven market, the right product, offered quickly and with due consideration to the circumstances of each application, will win business – any delay can be costly. Data and technology working in harmony are needed to achieve this. To ensure United Trust Bank could offer a real time, personal mortgage decision to its clients and seamlessly deliver it during the application process, they turned to Optalitix.The banks’ recent success has resulted in a complex system environment as UTB added technology at pace. The operational burden of servicing a growing client base, coupled with the pressures of continued product innovation, mean an automated solution is a necessity.The challenging dilemma of scale and the desire to improve service levels without having to acquire scarce resources in house, led them to Optalitix.

The solution

Optalitix, using their innovative Optalitix Originate platform, were able to provide United Trust Bank with a technology-driven automated solution that propels the bank to the cutting edge of market developments, ahead of many fintech lenders and most retail banks. Their new decision in principle product allows for greater broker access and increased product lines via an AI-driven workflow.The new Decision In Principle (DIP) technology ensures the customer has a loan decision based on more than just a set of answered questions. Responses are verified and supplemented real time through credit agency and valuation APIs, factoring in custom and unique affordability metrics and a risk-based tolerance assessment.  

This enables a real time due diligence decision-making process that is worth the “paper” it’s written on.A broker can take the customer through the application journey independently and without the need for underwriter involvement. A lending decision is reached far quicker with a lower burden on the number staff required by the bank. The underwriter is still involved but in a far more efficient and precise manner, ensuring productive use of underwriting resource as the DIP presents most of the results via the automated process.

What was innovative about the solution?

In implementing the solution, Optalitix and United Trust bank needed to be aware of what was already in place and working, what solutions needed improving and which could be replaced. The Optalitix Originate Platform, allowed users to be transferred to the new DIP process via a smooth transition that would largely be unnoticed, other than for the speed of decisions. To give UTB a boost, the new system architecture needed to allow for rich customer engagement and enhanced system integrations to enable rapid data decisions.In less than 12 months from idea conception, a solution delivering a significant return to the bank was in place. United Trust Bank has a product that embraces scale and delivers a large return on investment, and its customers now benefit from faster, quicker, and more reliable decisions. This is just the beginning of a joint journey to develop even more value to customers and brokers via agile and rapid innovation.Too often the biggest obstacle to successful innovation is the concern around the process of getting to efficiency, even if we know efficiency will lead to greater profitability. Optalitix’s Originate platform delivered an intelligent data aware solution in a manner that enabled United Trust Bank and its customers to benefit from automation and digitization while enhancing the existing infrastructure that worked and the broker and customer relationships already in place.