If you're taking a well-earned holiday, work is probably the last thing on your mind, and rightly so. But when you do get a quiet moment to reflect (perhaps between poolside pages or café stops), it’s worth thinking about those busy workdays that sometimes stretch from 8am to 8pm, when you actually intended them to run from 9-5. We’ve all been there, and while the occasional extra long day is par for the course, when you get a succession of them, there could be a problem.
So where are all those hours and minutes going? Are you spending your time where it really counts, or is too much of it getting lost to tasks that could be simplified, automated, or just done better?
Is it quick, consistent, and digital? Or are you still manually collecting information across calls, emails, and PDFs? A slow Fact-Find process doesn't just cost you time, it can also delay client trust and decision-making. You may even be using a Fact Find template designed for more generic financial services, where you’re duplicating data or scrolling past unnecessary data entry fields.
We also know that FCA Compliance and Consumer Duty are important obligations that are time consuming. So we’ve created a mortgage specific Fact Find, a unique Binder feature, that focuses on the questions you need to ask to provide the critical answers that lenders need to know.
This article from the Society of Mortgage Professionals How AI and technology are transforming the UK mortgage market is a timely reminder that the lending decision-making process is now based on far more sophisticated application information, hence why mortgage-specific Fact Finds are essential. And why ours is designed to meet the rigours of the lending application process.
With the Binder Fact Find, not only is the data entry more intuitive but your client application data can be saved securely for repurposing later if they return for a new mortgage renewal. With Binder we help you achieve speed, efficiency and accuracy.
Think about chasing updates, checking case statuses, cross-referencing notes, or manually updating spreadsheets. These little tasks add up fast, and can seriously eat into your important client-facing hours. Accuracy is important too, and when you’re under pressure from a mountain of admin work costly mistakes can be easily made.
With the Binder mortgage adviser CRM we’ve created an organisation management structure that enables you to assign different roles to people within your team. This means that important background admin tasks can be undertaken by admin specialists who can focus on completing the finer details for optimum caseload progression. By doing this, you can allocate more time to sourcing the best lending deals for your clients, and spend more face to face time developing new business.
As this FT article reminds all of us in the industry, day to day mortgage admin wastes valuable time that could be spent elsewhere.
The regulatory landscape isn’t getting any simpler. Making sure your client advice trail is watertight, and your client communications are audit-ready can feel like a job in itself.
There’s been much debate on the challenges of embedding Consumer Duty into working culture, and we know (as mortgage advisers ourselves) that it’s another layer of complexity to achieving “good outcomes” for every client.
As this Money Marketing article explains, the Financial Conduct Authority has been under pressure not to simplify the compliance rule book following the introduction of Consumer Duty back in 2023. So, there’s no getting away from an ever stringent regulatory framework.
With Binder, we can help take away the day to day stresses of compliance, and save valuable time, with secure document uploads, downloadable reports (at any time) on client caseloads which include a full audit trail of your conversations and correspondence. With Binder’s documentation management system you’ll always be FCA audit-ready. Plus, all your client files are encrypted for optimum security.
From payslips and ID to signed documentation and routine responses, keeping clients on track can feel overwhelming. Every missed email or delayed reply creates unnecessary friction - on both sides, especially when there is now so much emphasis on customer service.
With Binder we can help you achieve significant marginal gains with a client alert function that lets you know when your clients are active on the portal - so you can make quick, tactical contact to grab their attention.
Also, our Chat function helps bring all your client communications together into a single funnel so that you’re not juggling with messages from a multitude of sources.
And finally, we can help get you ticking off those key milestones with e-authorisation on key documents. No time lost waiting to pull everyone together for signing on the dotted line. This process is fully compliant and helps give momentum to each application at key stages in its progression.
“One of the key motives for setting up Binder was to find smart ways of taking back time. Time that can be re-purposed either to spend with your family, developing your pipeline of new business, or ensuring that you have optimum face to face time with your clients.” Simon Horsfall
Whether it’s a “decision in principle” confirmation, a suitability letter, or a follow-up email, writing them from scratch every time is a fast way to burn through your day.
One of the challenges of being a mortgage adviser is to balance workflow efficiency with correspondence that is both business-like and professional. In most cases your correspondence will be helping to progress the application. But in some cases you may need to be the bearer of less good news. Time spent worrying about tone of voice can leave you hesitating over the keyboard.
Whatever you need to say, our standard letter templates take the thinking out of originating new letters for every new client, and we’ve composed them in a way that ensures the main body of the text remains compliant, even with customisation.
With so many products and constant changes in the mortgage marketplace, it’s easy to get lost in the details, especially if your tools aren’t integrated or up to date.
With every new change in mortgage rates comes a flurry of new offers from lenders, each competing for their target buyer. Scouring the market for new deals is not only time consuming but it’s a highly fluid process.
So, the next new feature to come on stream is mortgage sourcing, direct into the portal as part of our mission to create a fully 1-2-1 digital mortgage experience. Automation in this area, across the entire industry, will become increasingly more prevalent, assisted by additional insights from AI.
Still in development, Binder mortgage sourcing is designed to give users the ability to pull through the best deals based on data gathered through our mortgage-specific Fact Find.
As part of this phase in our development project, we’re excited to have signed our first contract with mortgage sourcing company twenty7tec and we hope to be releasing this tool to mortgage advisers shortly.
For the record, it's worth noting that, after the turmoil created in the marketplace after the Truss budget of autumn 2022, the average two year fix rate is now at its lowest since before this.
But with recent further movement in the all-important sonia swap rates, we could be in for yet more falls in mortgage rates, as the latest This is Money blog suggests - creating another busy time for mortgage advisers.
When fully developed, our new mortgage sourcing tool will enable Binder users to more easily align the best mortgage deals for the lending needs of their clients.
Building trust, understanding your clients’ long-term goals, helping them plan for the future, this is where successful advisers make the real difference.
It’s also one of the key drivers behind the four principles of the FCA's Consumer Duty rules: products and services; price and value; consumer understanding; and consumer support.
Often your Fact Find is the start of a much longer relationship with your client, one that will often extend into advice around protection too. And the ability to earn trust on both sides never happens through technology, but through human, face to face contact.
Which is why time-saving technology plays such an important role.
One of the latest developments we’ve added to the portal is Binder Analytics, a tracking tool that gives you powerful insights into your daily, weekly and monthly performance. Binder Analytics helps you identify the areas where you need to sharpen your performance, and enables you see conversion rates and potential log jams in the pipeline
“Speed and workflow are critical to the day to day success of every financial adviser, so deploying intelligent tech to sweat all the small stuff is where we can make a real difference. Now, more than ever, this is even more important in an AI universe where the information that decisions are being based on all come down to the accuracy and relevance of the original Fact Finding data.” Simon Horsfall
Remember, Binder costs just £70pcm per user, with no limit on the number of caseloads.
Investing 45 minutes in a FREE demo will show how we can revolutionise your workflow efficiency. Click here to book.
