We are fans of technology and that is why way back in 2007 we went for a fully transparent business model which would allow our clients to track their mortgage on our system which uses the same level of security as online banking.

The current method of an online [glossary id=’6898′ slug=’mortgage’ /] application has not developed in Ireland to the extent that it could have, in part due to a collapse of lending.

We envisage that in time it will all be done online and electronically which will be good for everybody, brokers in particular as currently we end up using vast amounts of paper to replication applications to different lenders. The indexing of documents so that they can be sent securely online from one database to another is the next step.

In terms of when that will happen? Probably not for a few years yet, the systems don’t exist in banks to accept documents like this yet, a [glossary id=’6802′ slug=’broker’ /] could change easily because they have smaller less mission critical systems to work with. By that we mean that banking systems are often very rigid.

Rigidity is part of the reason that banks struggle to resolve mortgage issues, because their systems can only handle certain resolutions in an automated fashion, so things like split mortgages took a long time to work their way in (in IT hours spent creating the ability to do it).

For now an online application is really the first point of contact with either a broker or bank, so ‘apply online’ should perhaps be viewed as ‘start the process online’ because the rest of it is all labour intensive administrative work.