The hidden cost of long rallies

With Wimbledon just around the corner, sports fans will once again be settling down for two weeks of drama, endurance and remarkable shot-making. While the winners often grab the headlines, some of the most memorable moments come from the incredibly long rallies, where neither player is prepared to give an inch and the ball travels repeatedly from one side of the court to the other before, eventually, a breakthrough is finally found.

Those exchanges are part of what makes tennis such a compelling watch. However, in the homebuying journey, however, long correspondence rallies are rarely something to celebrate.

Despite the progress made in digitising much of the mortgage journey, the period between offer and completion remains one of the most operationally challenging stages of the transaction. It’s a point in the process where lenders, conveyancers and brokers are all working towards the same outcome, yet communication often remains fragmented, with information moving between multiple systems, inboxes and stakeholders before decisions can be made and cases can progress. The government's recent reforms aimed at reducing delays and fall-throughs are a welcome step forward, but improving the flow of information between participants remains a critical piece of the puzzle.

Post-valuation queries provide a useful example. These queries play an important role within the lending process and help ensure that both conveyancer and lender have the information they need to assess issues relating to a property or transaction. Yet the time taken to resolve them is often shaped as much by the process surrounding the query as by the issue itself.

What should be a relatively straightforward exchange can easily become an extended interaction as additional information is requested, supporting documents are reviewed and further clarification is sought. None of this is necessarily caused by complexity, more often, it reflects the reality that the right information was not available to the right people at the right time.

The pressure created by these inefficiencies is becoming increasingly visible across the market. We all know that the consumer would like greater certainty around what is happening with their transaction and when they are likely to move. Brokers need confidence that cases are progressing as expected, while lenders and conveyancers continue to face growing demands to improve productivity, manage risk and deliver better service levels.

Against that backdrop, the industry's focus is increasingly shifting towards removing friction from routine interactions. The objective is not to accelerate decisions at the expense of getting to the correct outcome, nor is it to replace expertise with technology. Rather, it’s about creating more structured ways of sharing information so that decisions can be reached more efficiently and with greater confidence to provide transparency and reduce fall through.

When requests are supported by the right information from the outset, unnecessary exchanges begin to fall away or, in the ideal scenario, the information is already available and so the interaction is not even required. Conversations become more productive, outstanding issues are identified earlier and transactions are able to maintain momentum rather than becoming trapped in lengthy cycles of clarification and response.

Tennis fans will always appreciate a marathon rally on Centre Court because it demonstrates skill, determination and resilience. The mortgage market tends to benefit from a different outcome. While some issues will always require detailed discussion, there is little advantage in allowing routine matters to bounce repeatedly between parties before a resolution is reached.

Not every point can be won with a single passing shot or off a big serve, but there is a considerable difference between a rally that lasts two or three shots and one that lasts fifty. The more the industry can reduce unnecessary back-and-forth communication, the closer it moves towards serving up the certainty, efficiency and transparency that consumers, brokers and lenders increasingly expect, and conveyancers would clearly prefer. And the result would be game, set and match for everyone concerned in this already overly onerous and complex process.