Leeds BS announces open banking partnership to streamline mortgage applications

Leeds Building Society has partnered with Just Mortgages to enable advisers and clients to benefit from quicker and more efficient mortgage applications. The pilot uses an automated process to access applicants’ recent financial history via open banking.

Clients of Just Mortgages are now invited to connect to Experian’s open banking platform to provide access to their financial records, regular income and outgoing payments, in place of gathering and submitting bank statements.

Leeds Building Society intends to adopt the process with more of its intermediary partners as Just Mortgages becomes the second business to benefit from the process.

James O’Reilly, head of intermediary partnerships at Leeds Building Society, said: “This partnership is another example of how we are using close collaboration and new technology to streamline the mortgage application process and make life easier for Just Mortgages’ advisers and their clients.

“Through our partnerships with Just Mortgages and Experian, we have been able to make meaningful differences to the mortgage journey.

“We are looking forward to taking the learnings from this pilot forward with more of our intermediary partners and expanding our use of automation.”

John Doughty, chapter managing director at Just Mortgages, commented: “Gathering bank statements is a notoriously difficult and time consuming part of the application journey. By leveraging this technology through our longstanding partnership with Leeds Building Society, we are able to streamline this part of the process and give advisers time back to focus on supporting customers.

“Even in its early stages, the pilot is demonstrating how open banking can deliver meaningful efficiencies to our advisers and clients. We have seen a significant reduction in application times which speaks for itself. Partnerships such as this are an important way for us to support our advisers and remove friction throughout the mortgage process. It’s also a testament to our position in the market and the scale of our adviser network to be involved at this early stage.”