We put a lot of effort into the little things because they add up to a better experience for brokers, says Laura Myers, technology account manager at Halifax Intermediaries. The relaunch of our Intermediary Mortgage Affordability Calculator and Mortgage Product Search tool went live earlier this year. 

The changes have resulted in increased certainty about whether a product is available or if the case will fit before you submit a full application or generate a decision in principle (DIP).

These may not be the kind of changes that hit the headlines in the mortgage press, but they are still important.

We know that by making incremental improvements to our online tools and processes, the journey to offer becomes smoother and easier, making a difference to your day-to-day working life.

We’ve already received great feedback from brokers about the tools being much easier to use and their improved accuracy.

Fixing pain points

Our Homes Platform Team centres around the online user experience for mortgage brokers and strives for continual improvement.

It’s not about creating a perfect website – that doesn’t exist. We operate in a shifting market, which means constantly adapting our online proposition to meet the changing needs of both brokers and borrowers.

It’s this ethos which runs through Halifax Intermediaries, from product design to technology, and has motivated us to find the pain points in our broker tools and to fix them, resulting in a better experience for you.

Broker-centred research

Our starting point was to understand the User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) in-depth, looking at the style, design and visual touchpoints of the full journey from start to finish. It sounds technical, but the underlying idea is simple – to discover how brokers use our tools, what works and what doesn’t, and how we can improve them.

This way, we were able to target the areas which would have the most impact. Our research comprised feedback from a broad spread of brokers to reflect the market, from up and down the country, including both large and small firms.

Together with the brokers, we analysed how the tools were used, by watching their screens as they navigated the online journey.

For example, a long ‘dwell time’ on a cell suggests something isn’t explained properly or isn’t as easy as it should be. Maybe a selection button is too small and by making it bigger it becomes easier to select. Or we might find there’s too much information on the page, making it hard to quickly navigate.

This approach furnished us with so much information that isn’t possible to get by simply asking brokers questions.

Improvements we made 

Our Mortgage Product Search tool has a new interactive table function, and you can search using the product code to find what you want more quickly.

We also now pre-select the options that brokers choose most often on our Mortgage Affordability Calculator, to make it quicker and easier to move through the journey.

We ask if a client is using shared ownership, for example, but in the vast majority of cases, the answer is no, so that’s now pre-selected to save you extra clicks. And those saved clicks add up.

We’ve also made it easier to save the information you generate to a PDF or to print, making compliance requirements that bit easier to complete.

We can see from our data and analysis that the journey has become quicker and some of the pain points have been eliminated because of changes we’ve made.

We’ve also made sure the Mortgage Affordability Calculator and Mortgage Product Search tools work better across different devices and worked closely with third-party broker technology providers to integrate our tools. It means you get the same experience and accuracy whichever channel you choose to access our products and services through.

Looking ahead

Better technology isn’t always developed through large-scale changes to functionality or new website launches. Instead, thoughtful improvements, tiny tweaks and small shifts can make a tangible difference to those who use it.

The overarching aim of the Homes Platform team is to provide a more intuitive experience, understanding that brokers need ease, speed, accuracy and certainty across the tools they use. Halifax Intermediaries focuses on delivering changes to achieve this.

We look forward to delivering further improvements to brokers later in the year, and we’re confident they’ll enhance the online experience.

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