DPR, a provider of mortgage technology, has acquired online mortgage broker Burrow, a group that promises to make mortgages “delightfully digital”.
DPR which bought broker CRM system eKeeper last year, said the acquisition would allow lenders and brokers “to offer customers a frictionless end-to-end digital mortgage journey”.
Dave Patel, CEO of DPR Group, said: “Burrow’s mission is to make mortgages delightfully digital, offering smart research tools that allow their customers to compare products and explore their options online. This type of innovation is a perfect match for the work we do at DPR.mortgage lenders and brokers, to transform their multi-channel digital offerings.”
Burrow’s founder, Pradeep Raman, has joined DPR as director of digital solutions.
Liz Syms, chief executive of Connect Mortgages, said that although she believed that the process side of mortgage applications could be digitalised, it would be more difficult to replication the decisions of an adviser in digital form.
“Mortgage application can be cumbersome at the moment and we should be learning from other industries there,” she said.
“However, when it comes to advice there are so many factors and the lenders have so many different criteria, it would be very hard to replicate, especially with more complex circumstances, for example a credit blip, or a buy-to-let investor buying an HMO.
"At the moment I think that, although there is a case for more digitisation, people need that advice.”
DPR now has a core banking platform for origination and servicing that is used by over 40 UK mortgage lenders., as well as its broker management system eKeeper.
Mr Patel said that the company aimed to ensure that mortgage applications were integrated with Open Banking to streamline income verification and the categorisation of household expenditure, as well as providing streamlined application capture and processing, including credit scoring, affordability assessments and eligibility checks.
