The following piece about Eligible appeared in Mortgage Solutions on 15th January 2018.
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Fighting Habito and Trussle. Beat the Robo brokers. Eligible co-founder and chief executive officer Hasan Mustafa said the start-up wants to create a level playing field between established brokers and new players.
Consumer need for mortgage advice will stay strong in the future, but intermediaries could start to lose out if they fail to keep up with technological change, according to Mustafa, who has developed Eligible over the past 18 months with co-founder Rameez Zafar.
He told Mortgage Solutions:
“The pendulum has swung towards brokers – that’s why you have seen a lot of new players come in. Our view is that a good digital platform needs to be complemented with a high-quality advice proposition – they both need to work seamlessly together.”
Hassan Mustafa
Eligible aims to help brokers “go digital” by providing a white-label cloud-based software platform, designed to retain and build relationships with existing clients – and eventually onboard new borrowers.
The platform’s Mortgage Tracker works by taking brokers’ existing client data and providing customers with an individual customer dashboard branded by each broker– profiles are then mapped against lender criteria and products
When a customer is able to potentially save by remortgaging, an email alert is automatically sent out that links back to the individual’s dashboard where mortgage information and affordability can be updated and the broker can be contacted.
The system is to integrate lenders’ mortgage Application Programming Interface (API) as they go live and sourcing tools.
Mustafa said:
“The traditional brokers have trust, brand awareness and a significant pool of customers who have been very well served in the past.”
Hassan Mustafa
But advisers who offer a 30-minute application versus a five-minute auto-fill application will lose out in the long-term, he warned.
The intermediaries set to win are those who spend time giving advice – rather than data inputting.
Launch imminent
Eligible is now in a live pilot with a “very-well known” client and set to officially launch into the market with the deal in the coming weeks.
Mustafa hopes that the platform will take away the worry for brokers to keep up with the latest market technology and tools.
He and Zafar have built the offering based upon feedback and conversations with brokers, clubs and networks.
Mustafa added:
“There’s been a lot of people in the industry who have given us some amazing advice along the journey. The product has been developed in very close cooperation with potential clients – both from a product journey, compliance and GDPR point of view.”
Hassan Mustafa
Eligible hopes to turn a profit by charging brokers a licensing fee for the software service – and then a revenue charge based on how many new and existing customers are converted.
After raising angel investment last year, the start-up is about to commence its first round of institutional seed investment.
Over the coming year, Eligible will focus on further fund-raising, along with product development and client acquisition.
But for Mustafa the ultimate test of success will be how many customers are converted into completions – and how many more clients Eligible enables brokers to proactively contact.
It’s not just the Habito and Trusle types that brokers need to keep on their radar. Check out our article on mortgage comparison tools and how they’re impacting brokers and consumer buyer behaviour.
