Mobile consumption of video, web and “apps” are becoming more and more the norm as we sit down to watch TV on our tablets and laptops in between checking our emails, chatting on Skype, multi-posting on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, often simply posting “Watching TV, nothing on at the moment” in as succinct a method as possible.

While our private lives are crossing into more public lives and we consume information on our mobile devices, what about actually working on our mobile devices?

Everyone is pretty familiar with the usual scene of seeing someone checking their phones while waiting for public transport; friends hanging out ‘online’ together while sitting next to each other; let’s be honest, we’ve all been caught out checking our emails when we should be lavishing more attention on our loved ones.

But who is familiar with the business person reaching for their mobile device in order to process your home loan?

This is not the most common practice seen today and a strong correlation needs to be drawn to what is considered the social norm for both our personal and professional lives.

While it’s ok to be seen writing a full length novel in an email, who hasn’t said the line, ‘just give me two seconds to write this email honey’, is it ok to be seen completing an entire application form on your mobile?

With the advent of larger screen devices, such as iPad’s, various Android and Windows based tablets and Playbooks, it’s now becoming more and more common to sit in a meeting and reach for your tablet rather than get the laptop out, find a power source and hope your slow dongle gets you online.

The younger generation are the next home owners, the next home BUYERS and they are the ones that need to be impressed with the services that we offer today.

With the average teenager now consuming more information in one day than our parents did in a year, it’s no wonder that these next home owners want things done yesterday.

Don’t be afraid to embrace the new technologies on offer, adapt to the ever changing technology landscape and provide state of the art service to all prospective borrowers, regardless of the generation gap.

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.

While there were a number of other support providers in the running, Stargate was chosen as the back-to-back winner for providing consistent enhancements to support offerings to customers in order to enhance the mortgage industry as a whole.

This is the third time in 4 years that we have won this award, having also been named the best service provider in the industry in 2010 and 2007. It represents a continuation of the elite service levels that Stargate has been renowned for providing and is a true reflection of the time and effort that has been put into making Stargate the best services provider in the industry.

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

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.

Despite massive investments into hosted infrastructure by industry powerhouses such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, this gap in Broker understanding may prevent many from recognising the significant cost savings that the cloud can provide, possibly at the expense of acquiring new business because of a dependence on existing, out-dated on-premise solutions.

“Using cloud-based solutions can make a lot of sense in this day and age. Rather than buying and maintaining your own machines, why not take advantage of the huge investment that some of the world’s largest companies are making. Microsoft has literally acres of internet accessible servers, monitored by massive teams of engineers” says Brett Spencer, CEO Stargate Group.

“Maintaining your own systems can be hard. Many brokers are unable to grow their business properly due to constraints in their IT platforms. With installed software that runs on basic servers, many underestimate the need for future growth and plan for today only. When it comes time to grow, the costs can be prohibitive by having to upgrade old servers and software. Using the cloud takes care of this for them. Scalability and reliability are two of the biggest benefits of hosted solutions. Pay for what you use, scale up when you need it and pull back when you don’t.” Brett added.

Many brokers are already seeing the benefits to hosted applications. Online loan processing is becoming more commonplace and is simply another type of cloud-based solution. While the uptake of online loan processing and customer management solutions is on the rise, many brokers still continue to insist on keeping their back-office ‘on-premise’

“Moving your entire office to the cloud can realise some pretty big savings. With the release of Google docs a while ago, many realised that the need for software installed on your machines was simply more than what they needed to process a simple document. With the impending release of Office 365, brokers can recognise the costs savings of only needing to pay $5 per user per month for hosted exchange servers and they know that they can rely on having a 99.9% uptime.”

“Like many others, we’ve invested heavily into providing rock solid equipment to ensure our systems remain secure and available when our users need it and give them the confidence and proven record of performance over the past 15 years. Brokers need to understand that this method is safe, reliable and secure. Compare this approach to if you had all your data on a laptop and it was stolen or broken, where would you be then? With hosted, always-on solutions, your data will always be there.” Brett concluded.

Over 14% of all loans written by respondents went to the CBA Rate Saver product, which shows that the product is hitting the right nerve with both Brokers and Consumers. Even though the average loan size for the CBA Rate Saver was below the national average at only $314,000, the popularity with brokers is unmistaken. Whilst its nearest rival product at NAB Homeside only account for 5% of loans written in September, their average loan size was much larger at an average of $416,000 per loan.M/p>

Brett Spencer, Stargate CEO, “It’s clear that based on the results of this survey that both CBA and NAB have developed very strong products that are resonating well with Brokers using our Symmetry loan processing and customer management platform, particularly given they have access to over 1000 products from 40 different lenders”.

The Product Popularity Index will be published monthly by Stargate and will outline the 2 most popular products submitted by Brokers each month. Stargate provides its Symmetry loan processing platform to over 2000 mortgage brokers who have processed over $350Billion in mortgages.

Footnote: With the larger than expected response by CBA to the RBA decision to raise interest rates by 25 basis points yesterday, and with NAB and other lenders yet to announce their responses, it will be interesting to see the impact on the popularity of respective products in the Symmetry portfolio. The results will be published in the next Product Popularity Index due out 1 December, 2010.

As a finalist in the category of Best Industry Service, with an impressive field of nominees, Stargate will have to wait until the end of September to find out who will take home this coveted award.

According to Stargate CEO, Brett Spencer, “ This recognition validates our commitment to this industry and spurs all of us on to become better at what we do. With Symmetry CRM just around the corner, we are excited at how else we can assist our client businesses achieve their goals”.

Stargate Symmetry is a leading loan management platform delivering unparalleled efficiency and productivity gains to mortgage brokers throughout Australia and New Zealand.

The AMA awards are being held in Sydney on September 24, 2010.