‘We want to make the customer journey more seamless’: Mortgage Brain and Air on sourcing integration
Mortgage Brain and Air’s partnership aims to make later life lending more accessible to mainstream mortgage advisers and encourage a more holistic approach to customer advice.
Mortgage Solutions sat down with Neil Wyatt of Mortgage Brain and Will Hale of Air to discuss how Air’s integration into Sourcing Brain could make a difference for advisers and clients, and what it could bring to the wider market.
Wyatt (pictured, right) said the integration had been driven by demand from customers who already used both platforms and wanted a more streamlined experience.
He said: “Why do you want to be jumping from one system to a different system and repeating data all over the place? It makes absolute sense.”
Both said the partnership would bring together Mortgage Brain’s expertise in mainstream mortgage sourcing and Air’s specialism in later life lending.
Hale (pictured, left) highlighted that the two businesses had complementary propositions.
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He said: “By working together, we can bring the best of both propositions and allow mortgage advisers to be able to come out of their mainstream world and look at the specialist world in a more seamless way.”
He added that advisers should be able to assess whether they could provide advice on a particular product themselves or refer customers to a trusted specialist.
You can’t ‘create an army of super-advisers’
The integration comes amid growing calls for more holistic mortgage advice, with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) examining the later life lending market as part of its wider work on the sector.
Hale said: “Holistic advice is the right thing to aim for. But actually, how we achieve that needs careful consideration. I just don’t believe that it’s going to be possible to create an army of super-advisers who can advise across everything in the market.”
Mortgage Brain said its wider technology strategy was based on connecting specialist providers rather than attempting to build every service itself.
“What we’re not trying to do is reinvent the wheel, or create horrible customer journeys,” Wyatt said.
He added that Mortgage Brain’s relatively new system allowed it to “build it with the building blocks to cater how we see the market evolving with holistic advice over the next few years.”
Hale said the market has arrived at a “sweet spot”, where customer need for later life lending has driven this collaboration.
He commented: “There’s a real driver as to how can we help people unlock that value to live a more comfortable and fulfilling later lives.”
The initial integration is the first stage of a longer-term roadmap, with both businesses expecting to develop the partnership further over the next six months.
Looking 12 months ahead, Hale said success would involve more substantive integration between the platforms and improvements to the advice journey in both directions.
He added that the partnership could also act as a “catalyst” for a more holistic considerations of the tools available, “so we get to the right recommendations for more customers”.
Wyatt said the one key measure of success would be whether the integration saved advisers time and delivered value to users and better outcomes for borrowers.
“I want to make sure from a consumer duty or end customer viewpoint that they’re getting better outcomes as a result,” he said.
