Mortgage expert Karl Deeter has raised €1 million in funding for his online mortgage and insurance solution fintech through several Irish entrepreneurs and Enterprise Ireland.
The company, onlineapplication.ie, allows customers to upload their bank statements within seconds and avoid the traditional paper chase that goes with a mortgage application.
It also enables lenders access real-time financial data so they can verify the applicant’s identity, account number, income sources and account balance – potentially shaving weeks off applications.
The funding round was led by Patrick Joy, a former EY entrepreneur of the year, and Harry Largey, whose joint venture vehicle Commodore Investments backed and sold previous companies to Stripe, EVO payments and IBM.
“Systems that give customers mobile access to complex financial products are proving to be the best solution, due to how people have been interacting with financial companies and this was compounded by social distancing requirements and the lockdown,” said Mr Deeter, “Every month of the pandemic has advanced fintech by about two years in terms of how people are willing to adapt to new ideas.”
€400 million
The company is already being used by the State’s largest brokerages and is managing several thousand applications equating to more than €400 million in lending at various stages, according to Mr Deeter.
Mr Deeter predicts that mortgages originated through brokers will account for half of all such lending by the end of next year, a level not seen since before the property market implosion in 2008.
Home loans activity carried out through intermediaries hit a low point of about 20 per cent following the crash as overseas lenders retrenched from the market and mainstream banks focused on lending directly to customers.
Brokers account for about 40 per cent of current lending, with figure set to rise further in the coming months as Avantcard, part of Spanish banking group Bankinter, enters the mortgage market.
Onlineapplication.ie also solves issues around anti-money laundering, financial compliance, data protection and automated processing, and deals with many legal requirements that banks must address, according to Mr Deeter. The fintech’s ability to streamline the traditionally cumbersome mortgage application process could also encourage more switching of mortgage providers by customers to find savings.
