"Look out for the launch of BTL Affordability – a new platform that will enable brokers to research how much their landlord clients can borrow"
FR: MBT Affordability was launched earlier this year – what feedback have you had from brokers?
We’ve had really good engagement from brokers. It's clear that affordability is a challenge for the mortgage industry and that people are looking for tools to help them understand the complex landscape of how much lenders will loan.
Brokers are, of course, using MBT Affordability to research the ‘best’ options in terms of affordability for their clients, but we have also noticed other ways they are using the platform, that we hadn’t really expected.
One thing that brokers are doing is using MBT Affordability to value and prioritise leads. Even with a limited amount of income and outgoings data brokers can run an affordability search on the platform so that they have the best possible guide to a prospect’s affordability even before completing a full fact find. This helps brokers to demonstrate how much value they can add, as early as possible in the process. They also use the affordability estimate to focus their valuable time on the cases that are most likely to complete.
FR: Are you introducing any changes in response to the feedback from brokers?
Yes, as a result of seeing how brokers are using the platform to convert and qualify leads, we have developed MBT Affordability Express, which provides a fast, accessible tool to help brokers earlier in the advice process. MBT Affordability Express is a streamlined calculator that can support initial conversations about affordability with clients and help brokers to qualify leads to ensure that available loan sizes are aligned to expectations, ahead of carrying out a full fact find.
We have also introduced a weekly newsletter called “Mr Affordability says...”, which provides brokers with free insights based on learnings from the thousands of cases that are run through MBT Affordability and the expertise of Mr Affordability, our resident affordability guru. As part of engaging with the large community of brokers that are already using MBT Affordability, we identified an opportunity to help brokers build their knowledge of the affordability landscape.
FR: Are you planning any future changes to MBT Affordability?
Look out for the launch of BTL Affordability – a new platform that will enable brokers to research how much their landlord clients can borrow based on the ICR of a property and their own income (top slicing etc).
Buy-to-let affordability calculations are no longer straight forward. It’s often the case that required rental calculations don’t deliver landlords the leverage they want, and an increasing number of lenders provide the opportunity to supplement the ICR with their own income, with products that allow top slicing.
So BTL Affordability will help brokers to work smarter, deliver better outcomes for their clients and demonstrate a clearer audit trail.
FR: Are you working with lenders as well as brokers?
Yes, MBT Affordability was originally intended to provide brokers with accurate answers to how much clients are able to borrow, but we soon realised that it can also help to advance the way that lenders develop their affordability rules.
Several lenders have already started to use the MBT Affordability platform to do just this and we are in negotiation with more lenders on the development of a completely lender-centric affordability platform that can offer a transparent and user-friendly way to deliver the insights they need to improve their affordability proposition.
This will be a positive development for those lenders but could also ultimately benefit customers as it should enable the development of affordability models that are targeted more directly for their specific needs.
FR: If you could see one headline in 2019, what would it be?
'100% of brokers use MBT Affordability'.
This is perhaps a little selfish, but it would be great news for brokers and their clients as well!
