- Up to 50% of the shareholding will be made available for brokers.
Date: 24th September, 2020
Mortgage software specialist, Mortgage Brain Ireland, has announced its plans to launch a novel share option scheme for brokers that would see them take an equity investment in the country’s leading electronic mortgage trading platform. This latest initiative aims to accelerate the deployment of Lendex, the new lender application and submission gateway from mortgage technology expert Mortgage Brain.
Lendex allows brokers to send applications in principle or full applications, including supporting documentation, directly through to lenders’ back office systems, through a single login, providing brokers with an audit trail to meet their compliance requirements. Lendex is free for brokers to use and is available as a standalone solution. Integration with different software point of sale (POS) solutions can also be enabled, thus protecting the brokers existing investment in technology.
In a bold strategic move, Mortgage Brain Ireland will provide a ‘call’ option scheme for brokers, now numbering over 100 mortgage companies throughout the country, to acquire up to 50% of the share equity in the company. The bid is designed to encourage greater adoption of e-trading by mortgage lenders and reward brokers for the additional value they add to the business. The Dublin-based software distributor plans to issue share options to brokers starting in January 2021. Share purchases will be enabled in January 2022 provided at least two more lenders come on board and begin trading using the Lendex platform.
Commenting on the move, Michael Quinn, Managing Director of Mortgage Brain Ireland, said, “It is ironic that it has taken a virus to accelerate our digital mortgage path. Our goal is to make brokers and lenders more productive in a heavily paper driven industry. Bringing brokers on-board and giving them an option to hold shares is a logical thing to do in this new environment. We truly believe that the Lendex platform will make the mortgage application and submission process much more efficient and compliant for both brokers and lenders. Mortgage Brain Ireland has already appointed a well-known corporate financier in Dublin, to value the company and structure a suitable and innovative share option solution. We look forward to formally opening this broker share option scheme for participation later this year” according to Quinn.
Mortgage Brain Ireland will also work with leading point of sale (POS) mortgage technology companies and enable them to integrate and embed Lendex into their IT systems. This will ensure that brokers can continue to use their IT investments in their existing software solution, thus giving brokers a seamless ‘end to end’ mortgage system which works well for them and protects their IT investments.
Mark Lofthouse, CEO of Mortgage Brain UK, also strongly endorsed the share option initiative. “This builds on our considerable strategic investment in developing the Lendex mortgage platform. Lendex provides significant, tangible benefits to lenders and brokers alike by streamlining the mortgage process and improving efficiency across the board. Mike has taken a very different tack to the UK by focusing his share option scheme for the broker community. This approach we believe will indeed prove a big success and should kick-start the digitization of the ‘end to end’ mortgage process for brokers, lenders and software developers”.
