Sean McDonnell looks at lender websites and how brokers should make the most of the features on offer

Mortgage lenders websites are strictly for business, but could you also have some fun using them? Well, maybe fun is too strong a word, but if you look objectively at what has been going on for the past year or so, there have been some enormous strides in development.

We tend to take our favourite websites for granted. We use them to check travel times, book tickets and catch up with the latest news, but often don’t look beyond the booking facility, for example, at the other content.

Many intermediaries will use lenders’ websites on a daily basis and will want to log on, process applications and track cases. Most will be focused on getting the job done as quickly as possible. The commonplace adoption of straight-through processing has been revolutionary – and continues to gather pace as the arrival of same-day offers shows.

But, there is a huge amount of additional functionality which is pretty exciting too. Clever innovation is designed to make the whole experience of working with a lender online a lot more personal and in many cases is useful beyond arranging a specific deal.

Previously, many sites were basic ‘welcome doormats’. Intermediaries would ignore much of the content and would simply want to log into secure areas. Now, it’s worth taking a much closer look at the rest of the offering.