"All too often it is overlooked just how important speed is, for both the broker and the client. Yet it can make a huge difference, potentially a life-changing one."
When you’re a lender, mortgage brokers can be your harshest critics. Brokers want the best for their clients, and rightly so, and if a lender lets them down in some way then you can be sure you’ll hear about it.
So it means a lot to win the backing and support of brokers, as Atom Bank did in the latest Mortgage Lender Benchmark survey from Smart Money People.
The survey is the largest poll of intermediaries, with brokers scoring different lenders based on their experiences. And it made for really positive reading, from my perspective, with Atom Bank winning the Best Bank accolade.
To top the Best Bank category once would be a significant achievement for a player of our size, when you consider the resources and legacy enjoyed by our competition. To do it three times in a row, as we now have, is little short of extraordinary.
Particularly pleasing for me was the fact that not only did we top the bank category, but in the latest survey we also scored highest of all lenders, banks or otherwise. That speaks volumes about the improvements that we have made to our products and services, but also to the strength of the relationships we have built with brokers.
Focusing on what matters to brokers and borrowers
The overall score of 94.7% only tells part of the story. We achieved the highest score of any bank or building society in six out of the seven categories tracked in the survey, for example scoring 94.7% for online tools and systems, 93.7% for the ease of determining product eligibility and 92.1% for speed.
These scores are incredibly gratifying, because they are areas we identified as ripe for automation and improvement, and it shows that the extensive work we have engaged in has paid off.
We want Atom Bank to be the easiest lender to deal with, but that can only happen if you take a step back to review what’s really necessary, and utilise broker feedback to pinpoint pressure points that can be addressed.
It’s easy to talk about wanting to be the fastest in the market, but it takes a lot of work - and yes, a few mistakes along the way - in order to turn that aspiration into reality.
Why speed matters
All too often it is overlooked just how important speed is, for both the broker and the client. Yet it can make a huge difference, potentially a life-changing one.
We had a case recently which illustrated this perfectly. The broker and borrower had gone through a miserable experience with a high street bank, taking three months over an application and still failing to deliver an offer. The client was incredibly stressed, facing the prospect of a house purchase collapsing, through no fault of their own.
Their house was packed up, all ready to go, yet they were in limbo because of the lender.
The broker suggested they take the case to Atom Bank instead, confident that we could turn things around in time, and we did. The borrower went from application to completion in just five days, allowing the case to complete on time.
Obviously the client was thrilled, having avoided the expense and further upset of seeing the purchase fall through. But there was a big benefit to the broker too. By working with a lender that can turnaround cases so quickly, it reflects well on them and reduces the number of stressed phone calls and emails, chasing updates.
Looking to the future
It’s been a year filled with milestones for Atom Bank. We have enjoyed our highest profitability levels across the business, have become the top ranked UK bank on Trustpilot with a five-star rating, and on mortgage lending have repeatedly broken records for near prime lending activity as more brokers become aware of our offering. We continue to have some of the fastest application-to-offer times around, delivering a decision within three days on average. On the commercial mortgage side we have seen similar improvements in speed, where we have also passed the £1 billion milestone for money lent.
These are all tremendous achievements and show that we are heading in the right direction, making a tangible difference to brokers and their clients, whether they are residential borrowers or businesses. But while these achievements should be celebrated, we are also keenly aware that the mission is far from finished. Atom bank will continue to look for ways to deliver an even smoother, stress-free experience for brokers and borrowers alike.
And we know that we can rely on brokers to tell us how we are getting on in achieving those goals.
