How technology is helping brokers find solutions for their most complex cases

From Mortgage Adviser to Product Lead

Dapinder Williams has spent her career on both sides of the mortgage process. She started out as a mortgage adviser, then moved into operations, managing case teams and overseeing the completion and servicing side of lending. That ground-level experience led her to work as a subject matter expert with technology teams, translating what brokers actually need into what systems actually do. From there she became a business analyst, and eventually Product Lead here at LiveMore - it‘s a background that shapes everything she builds.

"Technology is very important to us," she explains. "We want to make the journey for our brokers as slick and streamlined as possible. We want to remove the friction points, and make it easy for them to interact with us and find solutions."

What Makes the Mortgage Matcher Different

At the heart of our broker portal is our LiveMore Mortgage Matcher, an affordability tool that does something most lenders' calculators do not: it looks across the entire product range from a single submission.

"We are product agnostic with our initial calculator," Dapinder explains. "We can show potential borrowing options across the whole range. It's not just equity release, or just standard interest only. We can look at capital and interest, RIO, part and part. It gives a quick snapshot of what's possible across everything we offer."

For brokers working with clients aged 40 and over, whose income rarely comes from a single source, this matters enormously. The Mortgage Matcher's affordability engine takes into account employment income, rental income, multiple pension types, and future expenditure patterns, running a cash flow model across the potential mortgage lifecycle to arrive at an accurate and holistic view of what a client can borrow.

"It's not always as straightforward as they just have a salary and that's it," Dapinder says. "We have multiple income streams for a lot of our clients. And because we can take those into account and do a more thorough affordability assessment, that gives us the confidence to lend where others can't."

The answer is never just no

One of the most important features of our Mortgage Matcher is what happens when a case does not fit the initial request perfectly. Rather than returning a decline, the system looks for alternatives.

"It's never going to be a computer says no," Dapinder explains. "We will always try and look for alternatives."

This is where our counter offer functionality comes in. If the borrowing amount requested does not quite fit, the Mortgage Matcher suggests alternatives: a slightly different product type, an adjusted loan amount, or a term increased or reduced by a year. Critically, we built our system to be smart enough to respect what clients are looking for.

"If they've come in asking for a repayment mortgage, it's probably because that's one of the key things that's important to their client," Dapinder notes. "So we're not going to just suggest they switch to interest only. We'll look at whether adjusting the term solves the problem instead."

The result is a tool that helps brokers have a richer conversation with their clients, rather than arriving at a dead end.

Built on broker feedback

Our technology is not developed in isolation - broker feedback sits at the centre of every decision team makes, and Dapinder points to the recent overhaul of our case tracking system as a clear example of that in practice.

Brokers told us that once an application was submitted, visibility became poor. They were receiving static document lists by email, updates were easy to miss, and admin teams supporting brokers often had no sight of what was outstanding. The result was unnecessary delays and a high volume of inbound calls asking for updates.

We responded by rebuilding the case tracking experience from the ground up. Brokers can now see exactly which documents are outstanding, drag and drop them directly in the portal, track which stage their case is at in real time, and watch the outstanding document list shrink as underwriters review and clear each item.

"What brokers want is as much certainty as possible, as early as possible," Dapinder says. "Making that journey slick, making it easy for them to provide the documents, means we can review quickly and let them know we're all good. We can get an offer turned around quicker."

Challenge us

For any broker who has not yet tried the Mortgage Matcher, Dapinder's message is straightforward.

"Challenge us. Not just the straightforward cases, but the ones you think would be difficult to place, the ones you're not sure any other lender would consider. Come and give us a go and see what we can do."