The Society of Mortgage Professionals (SMP) believe the implementation of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May next year is “great news” for consumers and offers significant benefits for advisers.

Head of operations, Vishal Pandya, believes that a ‘right of data portability’ clause it contains will make it easier for people to transfer their data between service providers – provided it has been generated by themselves – which could result in the mortgage application process becoming much speedier.

“As customers find it easier to transfer their data between organisations, mortgage affordability checks could become streamlined and a whole lot easier,” he said.

“Furthermore, firms enlisted in the FCA’s regulatory sandbox are looking at mortgage affordability, so perhaps GDPR could form a pathway to move the industry forward.

“GDPR will make it easier for them to transfer data between service providers on request and seeks to protect against lock-in effects. Consequently, customers will be able to move around more freely and their data transferred without hindrance, thereby expediting the whole process.

“The right of data portability only applies where data is processed by automated means and the data subject has provided consent to the data processing. Any information being transferred must therefore be in a commonly used format and be machine-readable.”

However, Pandya admitted it may not work in every case. “There could be issues with collating and forwarding the data, given that many different organisations within the mortgage sector use their own individual systems,” he cautioned. “and legacy systems may not initially be compatible with newer software.

“But in general, GDPR will give people greater access to any information stored about them, the legal basis behind it and the period of storage.

“It will also ensure that firms cannot mix data for the provision of products/services with that used for marketing purposes.”