Knowledge Bank has launched an intelligence service that allows mortgage lenders to analyse more than one million criteria searches conducted by brokers each year.
Insights on KB PRO is updated every 24 hours and allows lenders to examine search patterns over three years, providing an indication of intermediary demand and how their lending criteria compare with those of competitors.
The data is drawn from searches by directly authorised brokers, appointed representatives and the helpdesks of mortgage clubs and networks.
Knowledge Bank said lenders could use the information to identify changes in demand and gaps in their propositions, as well as to inform decisions about lending criteria and products. The service is intended to show where criteria may be preventing lenders from considering cases that brokers are seeking to place.
The launch follows the expansion of Notify, Knowledge Bank’s service through which brokers can contact lenders about cases that narrowly fall outside their criteria. An increasing number of residential and buy-to-let lenders are using the system, according to the company.
KB PRO allows access across lenders’ product, proposition, sales, marketing and intermediary support teams. Knowledge Bank said this could help different departments assess broker demand and evaluate the effect of changes to criteria.
The company said lending criteria, exceptions and the ability to accommodate borrowers’ individual circumstances were becoming increasingly important in competition for mortgage business, alongside interest rates.
Shane Chawatama (pictured), sales director at Knowledge Bank, said: “Lenders have access to enormous amounts of information about the applications they receive, but that only tells part of the story. It does not show them the cases they never saw because their criteria excluded them from a broker’s search.
“Insights on KB PRO changes that. By drawing on over a million annual searches from brokers across the market, we can give lenders a much clearer view of genuine intermediary demand and how their criteria are performing against it.
“This is not data based on assumptions or a limited snapshot. It reflects the searches being carried out every day by individual directly authorised brokers, appointed representatives and the helpdesks of some of the biggest clubs and networks in the market.
“Combined with Notify, this gives lenders an incredibly powerful way to identify opportunities, make effective criteria and product changes, communicate them to brokers and then better understand their impact.
“In a market where the difference between placing and losing a case is so often found within the detail of a lender’s criteria, this level of intelligence can provide a genuine competitive advantage.”
