11/02/2010 - Getting a mortgage may not be easy...

….but you can certainly play around with one online

A recent update of Mapa’s Mortgage Dashboard has highlighted the abundance and variety of online calculators available to potential mortgage customers.

When assessing mortgage lender websites we have become used to seeing calculators that provide customers with an idea of how much they could borrow based on income and expenditure, and calculators that will provide an estimate of monthly mortgage payments. However over the past couple of years we have seen other types of calculators appearing online.

Cheltenham and Gloucester have a switching calculator on their website which advises visitors of how much money they could potentially save by switching their mortgage to C&G, along with details of the products available to them with clear calls to action to apply online.

On the HSBC website customers can find out how much time and money can be saved by making overpayments to their mortgages (see right) . The calculator is very easy to use with sliders that customers move to amend data and the results are displayed in a graph that is both visually pleasing and easy to understand.

LTSB have a very simple calculator on their site which highlights the costs associated with moving home such as property surveys, legal charges and removal costs. Although the calculator simply adds together the figures entered by the customer and therefore is only useful if accurate information is input, it serves well in drawing the customers’ attention to costs that they might have otherwise been unaware.

This brief list is by no means exhaustive but does demonstrate that lenders are making an effort to give customers more information online, and that this information can be tailored for individual circumstances making it more useful.

What is a Mortgage Dashboard?

The mortgage dashboard(.pdf) compares a list of 150 individual mortgage services across 19 of the top mortgage providers in the UK. All information is obtained replicating the customer experience. The Mortgage Dashboard is updated quarterly, highlighting competitor changes that have occurred in the market during that time – read more about our Competitor Monitoring.

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