Bespoke outsource model for leading mortgage broker

The client, one of Australia’s leading mortgage and financial services companies, approached Sundaram Business Services with the goal of achieving lower operating costs, improved process efficiencies and reduced turnaround time in tasks related to pre-credit, processing, discharge and variations, assisting firms with broker accreditation and lender updates. Their challenges were:

• Document management: the client urgently needed to streamline its document management processes, to improve quality and accuracy
• Communication: the application turnaround time was too long, with customers waiting up to 3 days to receive news of the lending decision.
• Compliance: the client had a huge challenge in keeping abreast of the current regulations and compliance requirements
• Commissions: the financial services company needed to seamlessly track commissions to their respective lenders, essential for seamless cash inflow.

Our on-site study identified process improvements, from which we designed a bespoke engagement strategy.

• Loan application processing: process controls such as checklists, workflows and streamlined communications. This reduced repetitive tasks such as application data capture, validation and segregation of documents under relevant headers, property valuation workaround, liaising with brokers/solicitors for certifications, disbursement letters and generating customer-centric reports.
• Turnaround time: we achieved same-day turnaround for pre-credit application processing, by maintaining a 3-hour window between the application hitting the lender portal and the decision being communicated to the customer.
• Compliance: with close to a decade’s expertise in the mortgage industry, we continuously monitors compliance developments and provides customised checklists to maintain strict adherence.
• Commission management: customised workflows ensure that receipts of commissions on the track and related communications are available for timely reporting.

• Sundaram brought down the turnaround time from 3 days to a few hours.
• More efficient processing of different distribution channels led to a greater understanding of the overall client database.
• Significant cost benefits