It gives me great pleasure to announce that the Stargate Group has won the 2011 MFAA (Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia) Excellence Award in the category of Best Support Services Provider. This award is the highest accolade for any service provider in the industry and acknowledges excellence in service provision.

Stargate is honoured to be again nominated for this prestigious industry accolade, the 2011 MFAA Excellence Awards. Nominated in the Best Support Services Provider of the year, this is the 4th year in 5 consecutive years that we've been a finalist! Hopefully a back to win for us this year.

Stargate announces the launch of its inaugural “Symmetry Products of the Year Awards” today to identify and recognise the most popular lenders and lending products in 2010. The Symmetry Products of the Year or ‘Symmies’ will recognise, acknowledge and award the best lenders and the best lending products available in the market today for both the Bank and Non-Bank sectors.

This week’s Stargate survey has signalled revealed that over half of the broker respondents (275) were not confident their systems accurately reflected the ever-changing product requirements in the current market and that this uncertainty had cost them business. Product accuracy and availability was highlighted as imperative for brokers to respond to current market uncertainty and lack of this accuracy did hinder their ability to convert this uncertainty into new business. “With both bank and non-bank lenders making strategic product changes daily, Brokers need to be 100% confident the information they access is accurate to ensure customer satisfaction and maximum conversion of opportunities for Brokers” Brett Spencer, Stargate CEO.

A recent Stargate survey has highlighted that more than two-thirds (72%) of the 365 broker respondents expressed confusion and concern over hosted software applications and the security implications of their data under such a setup.

While broker acceptance of cloud-based solutions is growing, many are yet to understand the benefits that hosted solutions can offer over traditional “on-premise” solutions.