Podium (MS Mortgages) 🏠

Business Insider’s been able to get hold of a few more details here -

the key comment for me is this -

“It really is the final area no one has been able to digitise,” Hancock said. "This is one of the most complex and one of the most significant financial transactions we make in our lives.

emphasis mine

I really hope that they have bigger ambitions that digitisation, it’s an important step but there’s so much more potential!

On that note, I was listening to an interview with Habito’s CEO on the Rebank podcast the other day.

He shared some really interesting info saying (at about 11:22) that their research with the University of Manchester found that 55% of people were overpaying on their mortgage, by an average of £294 per month. That amounts to 15bn of interest being overpaid per year. I expect a few people here have some experience with that :grimacing: so there’s clearly a very big opportunity to go after here.

He also mentioned (13:05) that there’s a close correlation between education level & the level of overpayment. The reading age required to understand a mortgage contract is undergraduate level & about 50% of the population doesn’t have that. So he said that it seems likely that it’s those people who are overpaying on their mortgage. And it’s that sort of thing that, if I’m cynical, I doubt a company like MoneySupermarket will be paying attention to.

So add that to the fact that Habito has the tech / FinTech elements like actually having an API, which will enable them to deliver much better user experience for users of the challenger banks, like Starling & other services and I’m hoping that this doesn’t impact challengers like Habito too much.

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