Shawbrook Bank has seen a dramatic reduction in the time to process buy to let mortgage offers since rewriting legacy software through a Pegasystems platform.

The bank says the time for customers to move from an indicative BTL mortgage offer to a full digital offer has been slashed from 40 to 11 days, with process automation technology from Pegasystems boosting underwriter productivity from an average of six mortgages per week to 20.

Shawbrook Bank – specialising in small and medium-sized business customers, consumers and property investors – was the result of a merger of five different finance firms in 2011. Its dramatic growth since that time has led to it rewriting processes on its loans and savings side, turning it into a 100 per cent digital business with no branches or current accounts.

The bank’s chief technology officer, Russ Thornton, says: “Our ‘best-of-both’ strategy combines our deep human expertise with best-in-class technology … This second phase of our Pega journey continues to drive even better customer experiences, as well as – and really importantly – our colleague experience, through automation and easy-to-use low-code user interfaces.”

Steve Morgan, banking industry market lead at Pega, adds: “Having a timely, transparent mortgage application process is vital in the current UK housing market. Shawbrook is already seeing impressive efficiency gains that are positively impacting customers and the bank. As Shawbrook continues to roll out Pega Platform to other areas of the business, we look forward to seeing the results.”