Through early adoption and full PEXA integration, First Mortgage Services (FMS) has made a significant investment in its future.
Fast forward three years and Business Development Manager, Sales and Relationships at FMS, Roland Girvan, says its strategy has paid off.
“As a Business Process Outsourcing provider to over 20 lenders in Australia and mortgage processing being our core business, FMS needed to get involved with e-Conveyancing, and PEXA, to guide our clients through this journey. We made the decision to be an early adopter to service our clients. We were one of the first BETA integration test partners with PEXA and were one of the first in the market to fully integrate”.
“We wanted to make our customer’s property buying and selling experience as positive as possible. We thought the longer we were involved with digital transactions, the greater our learning would be – and a way to help safeguard or troubleshoot problems should they arise. It was clear to us, to provide best customer experience we needed to innovate”.
FMS started their pilot program with a lender more than three years ago. As with anything new, they often created solutions to problems on the run. Now, FMS has a refined process that’s working.
“As a mortgage service provider, the evidence is in; PEXA is economical and the customer experience is improved. We have been able to reduce some of the cost burden to customers and with many of our business partners.”
FMS are a premier mortgage processing company in Australia and New Zealand with more than 250 staff in every mainland city in Australia. For Roland, digital integration has helped improve business-to-business operations.
“For Suncorp and St George, and now AMP we have similar integration in place with their core platforms or extend our proprietary system for them to use. At their end, they haven’t had to make any radical change in the way they operate. Major change in such a fashion can be a real pain-point for them. There’s real quality assurance as they can rely on us to provide accurate data because it flows to us and we send it on to them”.
Early adoption wasn’t the only string to FMS’s strategy. Utilisation, the percentage of transactions settled digitally, played an important part.
“We have the skills and knowledge and have built teams in Brisbane and Adelaide capable of processing both digital and paper. Our two centres have given us flexibility while other businesses in this space get inundated very quickly when volumes start to increase. We anticipate that happening soon, but we’re ready to function efficiently.”
“We are advising other lenders, clients and potential clients of the benefits of online property transactions. We’ve lived it for three years and know how to get lenders up-and-running quickly – and a system that caters to manual and electronic settlements, allows lenders to focus on their core business”.
“We are actively inviting conveyancers and solicitors to the PEXA workspace and trying to convert settlements to electronic”.
FMS saw the benefit, did the ground work and are well positioned as utilisation rates increase.
“The future for us is simple. We plan to remain at the forefront of this industry and continue to be a leader in the digital space, while adding value to your clients”, said Roland.
