History of Mortgage, Banking and Insurance Software Automation
Our innovations in mortgage, banking and insurance software automation are just the latest in a long history of technical developments that have transformed the industry.
200 years ago - Financial transactions were processed by hand using a quill pen. Some underwriters at Lloyds of London keep this tradition alive today.
100 years ago – The invention of the typewriter doubled the speed at which transactions were processed.
30 years ago - DOS character based systems and word processors allowed typing mistakes to be eliminated from documents, vastly improving accuracy.
25 years ago - Single and multi user DOS databases became the industry standard, automatically printing documents from stored data.
20 years ago - Windows based systems made the process simpler to use and allowed the user to preview changes.
15 years ago - Electronic storage of documents further improved these systems.
All of the above needed less people at each stage.
Today – By integrating customer facing websites, price comparison sites and back office functions, thousands of new applications can be processed automatically in a few minutes.
All of these improvements – to speed, accuracy, automation, simplicity, document storage and integration – have produced systems requiring fewer people to run them. Processing 4000 mortgages took 8000 staff hours 200 years ago, or 1000 staff hours 20 years ago. Today it can take 50 staff hours.
Today, many of the data entry or clerical staff who would have been essential even 20 years ago are no longer needed. Companies that have been successful in the financial sector are smaller and smarter than their predecessors, and more profitable as a result. Instead, the key people are senior administrators, managers, directors and technical business project analysts. They build the processes that the computer uses, and provide clients with a high level of customer service.
With over 20 years’ experience in the financial sector, we have anticipated and shaped these changes, and helped our clients adapt to them. All of the significant technological changes in our industry have happened in the last 30 years, so imagine what systems will be like in 15 years time.