There’s a new player in SA’s home loan space in the form of MortgageMarket, an online platform that allows users to compare home loan offers from the country’s major banks in real-time.
MortgageMarket founder and property finance expert Timothy Akinnusi says in addition to providing a digital home loan marketplace, it offers money back to consumers in the form of a MoneyGuarantee promise.
“Home loan applications usually take a while to process and can be admin-intensive, depending on the lenders,” says Akinnusi. “It makes sense for homebuyers to access the entire home loan market without ever stepping into a bank. We can reduce the process to just two days, while increasing their chances of getting a home loan by over 70%, at no cost to the borrower.”
The motivation behind MortgageMarket was sparked after Akinnusi launched the first online home loans channel for Nedbank in 2012.
“Consumers received the channel well, so I felt if a bank can enable clients to reach them directly and give them a great experience, then the impact at an industry level must be even greater and hence an online marketplace that gives consumers control, choice and convenience.”
MortgageMarket’s online platform has been designed to improve and automate the traditional home loan application process.
The customer creates a profile and is able to complete the entire application journey without any human intervention, unless requesting assistance.
One application goes to five of South Africa’s major mortgage lenders, in real-time. Consumers can view competitive quotes on one page, making it easier to choose the best option for their needs. They can shop and compare without worrying about hidden costs. Once they have chosen the best offer, MortgageMarket works with the client, bank and estate agent, to close the deal quickly.
MortgageMarket enters a space that already has players such as MortgageMe and PropertyFox making inroads in the online property space.
However, Akinnusi believes his digital home loan offering has the competitive-edge.
MortgageMarket provides a unique service-offering in that no other comparison services are integrated to banks in real-time, he states, adding that being able to offer consumers a minimum of R5 000 up to R25 000 is also a plus. “We expect to compete on the quality of our service design and more importantly continue our obsessive drive to give consumers significant ongoing value.”
Akinnusi points out MortgageMarket is offered at no cost to the home loan applicant. “This service is 100% free to consumers as the banks pay MortgageMarket a fee. The consumer’s rate or credit is not impacted by us providing the service to them.”
Explaining how MortgageMarket will make a return on investment given that it is available free of charge and offers money back, Akinnusi notes the company is lean and built on a robust technology backend.
“We are a cloud-based platform which means our infrastructure and operating costs are lean. Furthermore, we don’t have to employ a lot of human capital as our clients are taking ownership of their online application journey so it’s only right that we reward them for this in the form of our MoneyGuarantee offering.”
He concludes: “We expect users to feel empowered in knowing they got the best deal on their home loan because they had the benefit of choice and convenience of making one application to five banks.
“Further to this, we expect them to feel like they are valued because they got their home loan on a platform that made the interaction with banks easier and actually paid them for taking the time to make the application on their own.”
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