For years now, we’ve been told that eCommerce solutions would be available at a touch of button, any place, anytime, anywhere – with the ever-present internet, insurers and advisers have been transacting business for a good number of years; however, the majority of this activity tends to be office based, or with the data collected face to face and then re-keyed into systems once back at base.

There are a number of technology advances that will potentially make the ‘anytime, anyplace, anywhere’ myth a reality. Wireless has been with for a good number of years, but mainly locked in our buildings or at hot-spots in public places – it is not particularly quick (ever tried collecting your e-mail at a Starbucks in London?), but just about does the job. Things are about to change – the first being the new generation of 3G phones utilising a technology called HSDPA – this technology brings speeds approaching three times a standard broadband connection, depending on the environment – with this type of bandwidth, data hungry solutions, like application forms processing, KFI production and general data usage becomes easy, but more important at clients’ premises; coupled with smart data tariffs from the mobile operators, eg T-Mobile’s Web ‘n Walk, using it doesn’t require a re-mortgage.

Next, Ofcom a few weeks ago released a part of the wireless spectrum, for free, for a new technology called Ultra-Wideband (UWB) – think of this as a USB cable (eg the thing that connects your camera to your PC) on ‘speed’ and without the cable. The new baby is for short ranges, but is incredibly fast – in 5 years’ time, you’ll be wondering how you managed to work with so much spaghetti of cables connecting from this PC to that Printer etc. The technology can also be used for the home, so bye-bye SCART, HDMI etc. You’ll buy your High Definition TV and once turned on it will ‘talk’ to your Sky HD digibox and in turn to your new HD-DVD recorder with not a signal cable in sight.

Reading the mortgage press this week has been a somewhat depressing and indeed worrying experience. A lot of focus has been put on the subprime market following both the FSA review last month and current US crisis. Add to this the rise in repossessions and you have the recipe for a tabloid media feast claiming that gung-ho lenders and brokers have been selling loans to clients that they could never possibly service let alone repay once the head line rate had disappeared..

Another area that has gained media attention is the response of lenders to government pressure to launch long term mortgages. Yet this too has been met with some cynicism with the commentators saying they won’t take off as it is not in the interests of a broker to sell a long term product. . This is a fair point as what incentive does a broker have unless lenders can make it worth their while. It does however illustrate why some people remain sceptical about the broker market suspecting that procuration fees will drive behaviour ahead of what is in the best interests of the clients and dare I say it, ahead of treating customers fairly.

So in these 2 news stories alone we have:
• Brokers failing to get to Know their clients well enough
• Affordability checks being inadequate and
• Procuration fees driving behaviour
In an ideal world prevention is better than cure and proper processes and systems negate many of these criticisms.. Point of sales systems, calculators and credit check services are in place to prevent many of these things happening. Check out the Crystal Solutions Web site, Focus or Verfi websites to see some of the tools serving the mortgage market and the home buying consumer. (www.crystalsolutions.co.uk, www.focus-solutions.co.uk and www.verifi-solutions.com ).

The market needs to invest in processes and systems to address these issues so that the debate can move onto how we can make it even better rather than continuing to revisit past errors and mistakes. Many positive things are happening in the market – substantial product innovation, great consumer choice, investment in e-commerce that is continuing to drive down processing times and a mature set of sourcing systems that help brokers guide clients through an almost impossible maze of products, quickly and effectively. Let’s sort out the bad processes now urgently and move the debate on to the many positive things the industry is doing.

Boy, has the Sub prime market had a lot of attention recently. Many have concluded that the stock market falls of last week are directly linked to some cavalier lending in the US market while over here many lenders have withdrawn from this sector. In addition the FSA has been increasing its attention on the Sub-prime market; only last week two more brokers were fined because of mortgage advice failings while another was censored.

In essence the issues on both sides of the market are linked to poor advice and loan underwriting and an overwhelming belief that the good days would go on regardless. I would have thought that the lessons of the early nineties would have scuppered such optimistic delusions. Selling the wrong mortgage product to the wrong people, without the proper checks such as affordability can only have one long term result .

AT8 have long held the opinion that technology can help advisers “know your client” and in doing so avoid the problems we are witnessing today. This goes beyond moving the current sales processes to an electronic form (although this in itself is a big step forward) but looks at changing the sales process itself.

For example AT8 have been working with a new company Verifi ( www.verifi-solutions.co.uk ) who look at bringing forward the client assessment and credit checking in the sales process so the adviser can recommend the right products at the start of the process. I was pleased to see in the latest FSA research they state, as an example of good practice “A firm obtains credit references on all occasions to assess the credit status of applicants” . To achieve this though needs a clear and simple systematic approach and I believe Verifi have cracked this. In addition the Verifi approach includes calculators to ensure checks such as affordability can be easily done and consolidation of debt is not inappropriate.

The subprime and Self certification markets are important parts of the UK financial services industry and it is important that they continue to thrive and grow. However there is a real danger of a backlash as a response to the current industry happenings. To avoid this it is essential that the industry takes best practice sales approaches onboard and does so quickly.