Mr Lees said brokers need to embrace the benefits of technology’s by-products if they want to stay relevant in the marketplace.
“We’re urging brokers to value data capture and recognise that information they have on existing borrowers presents significant business opportunities,” he said.
Mr Lees is urging brokers to take advantage of innovative platforms that help tap into customer needs such as NextGen.Net’s ApplyOnline, noting that 90 per cent of mortgages Connective brokers write are through the platform.
“The spinoff is an enormous amount of data captured. Not only is that data a great demographic snapshot, it’s an excellent forecaster for what consumers might do," he said.
Mr Lees said it is vital that brokers capitalise on these types of technology platforms.
“There is a rich source of data embedded in the application data on the NextGen.Net ApplyOnline platform, and every broker should think about how they can leverage that information for the benefit of their customers and to diversify their business," he said.
NextGen.Net shares tools with other parties to improve data accuracy, with Connective able to use an API (application programming interface) service from the platform to validate the address of a borrower.
“Besides pre-validating addresses to improve data quality, the API enables Connective to capture the geo-location of each address,” NextGen.Net sales director Tony Carn said.
“This means in future brokers will be able to search for customers by location.”
