Knowledge Bank today launches Knowledge Insights. It means for the very first time, the mortgage industry has instant data regarding what mortgages brokers are searching for.
Knowledge Insights will provide lenders with a realistic overview of what areas of lending criteria are the most popular and the most required. Currently, the only data available to lenders is product based and is historical, based on completions that may have happened two to three months prior to a report becoming available.
Knowledge Bank is now able to provide up-to-date search criteria in customisable data sets. This means that lenders can interrogate the data collated by Knowledge Bank to better understand what brokers are being asked for at this exact point in time and what kind of cases they are looking to place.
This could transform the mortgage market as nimble lenders will, for the first time, be able to design products that the market needs, when they need them.
Knowledge Insights will enable the whole of the mortgage market to better understand trends both as they are occurring and retrospectively, based not just on product or lending amount but the actual needs of borrowers as shown up by brokers’ searches for criteria. It will provide a unique level of understanding that just has not been available to the market until today.
It will enable lenders to develop product and policy where they can see that there is a proven demand for it. Knowledge Insights will enable lenders to understand their own propositions better and see where they may be missing out on business. Lenders will also be able to see where there is demand for policy or criteria that may well be a unique selling point for them and quickly tap into that market where they have funds available.
For example, where a lender may know that its big USP is to lend to people on ‘zero hours contracts’ and ‘ex-council houses’ say, they may well feel that there is a demand for this, so they would not understand if they were then not receiving this type of business. Knowledge Insights will now be able to demonstrate that, in this example, the reason the lender was not receiving the business was because brokers were also searching on ‘child benefit’ for this type of enquiry and the lender didn’t accept this, so was missing out on the business.
Following meetings and discussions, Knowledge Bank has also agreed to share all of its Insights data with the FCA, which is delighted to receive such an in-depth view of the market as it is at any given time, for the first time ever. The data will also be made available to other trade bodies requesting it.
Nicola Firth, CEO of Knowledge Bank said, “Data analysis is vitally important to mortgage lenders to enable them to constantly review their product offering and the criteria that sits behind their lending decisions. As most often now, criteria is the key driver now as opposed to the rate in terms of which lender the case will be placed with.
“We believe that Knowledge Insights will transform the market and the way that lenders develop products and policy, providing a level of insight that has never before been available.”