The first truly paperless mortgage has arrived!

Yorkshire Building Society is the first lender to offer consumers a truly paperless online mortgage process, and in recognition of this achievement Mortgage Finance Gazette has crowned the Society with its 2007 Innovator of the Year Award.

There are two main obstacles with online mortgage processing that generally prevent a complete paperless system. The first is the requirement for a signature, which requires the borrower to print the completed application form, sign it and then post it to the lender. Secondly, to verify the applicant’s identity, documents such as passport and driving licence are required, which also have to be posted to the lender.

Yorkshire Building Society has overcome these issues by first removing the need for a signature, replacing it with an in-house designed process that enables the Society to accept an online declaration. To address the second challenge of verifying the identity of the customer under money laundering regulations, Yorkshire has developed a link with information specialists, Experian, which uses a number of tools to verify individuals returning a confidence score back to the Society. Around 75% of all online applicants can be verified this way.

In addition to these changes Yorkshire’s online mortgage applicants can use a credit or debit card payment system for the fees associated with the mortgage, such as valuation and product fees rather than posting cheques, making the Society’s online mortgage process completely electronic.

David Jackson Yorkshire’s Head of E-Commerce said: “Customer feedback highlighted that the delay caused by posting information to the Society coupled with the risk of valuable documents being lost were big drawbacks to the online mortgage process and were therefore a priority for us to address. I’m delighted with our solution which is both innovative and effective in meeting customer demand for a faster, slicker online experience, and it puts Yorkshire firmly at the forefront of the consumer mortgage market.”

David continued: “It is also fantastic that our efforts have been recognised by the experts in the mortgage industry with the title of Innovator of the Year being awarded to us.”

Yorkshire’s new paperless online mortgage service has also been short listed for the ifs Financial Innovation Awards that are being held in London on Wednesday 21st November.