Sourcing Brain: v3.0 Release Notes

Help and guidance on using the new features including Criteria Brain integration

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Written by Marketing
Updated over a week ago

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In this guide

Sourcing Brain v3.0 contains a number of enhancements to the different aspects of the software. Full details are documented below.

Criteria Brain integration

A button linking to Criteria Brain has been included as a Level 2 filter. This is available on the Mortgage Details tile within Sourcing Brain. A checkbox is visible adjacent to the button. The checkbox will be checked when filters have been applied and blank when filters have been switched off, or not chosen.

It is designed to be a Level 2 filter to enable brokers to easily access Criteria Brain during the sourcing process to apply or deselect filters wherever necessary, without having to return to the Start/Home screen each time.

When selecting the Criteria Brain button, the user is launched into Criteria Brain website. If you are an existing user, you can enter your email address and password. If you are not an existing user, there is a ‘New User, Register Here’ option.

The Criteria Brain link takes the user straight into the Search screen, where there is the ability to select up to six filters using the options contained within the drop down boxes shown in the following screens.

Criteria Brain supports both residential and buy-to-let searches. Which search criteria is seen in Criteria Brain depends on the Applicant Type filter chosen within Sourcing Brain.

Once the filters have been selected, when pressing the Search button, Criteria Brain will then display a list of lenders and their acceptance of the selected criteria.

There are four categories that the lender can apply to a criteria:

  • Pass

  • Pass with warning – users should read the warning to decide if their client may or may not fit

  • Fail outside policy – users should check the lender’s policy to decide if their client may or may not fit

  • Fail

  • Lender missing data – Criteria Brain awaiting underwriting criteria from the lender

To return this information back to sourcing, the user must select the Send search results to Mortgage Brain button.

This closes Criteria Brain down and sends the data back into Sourcing Brain. The following screen is shown and will close down automatically once the data has been returned.

The filters are returned back to Sourcing Brain which opens up another two tiles, one confirming the filters used and a Lender Summary section. The explanation of the Lender Summary is as follows:

  • Lenders – the number of lenders searched within Criteria Brain

  • Pass – the number of lenders that have passed the full number of criteria

  • Pass (with warnings) – the number of lenders where users will need to check the warnings for the pass

  • Fail (outside policy) – the number of lenders who have failed a criteria due to it being outside of their policy

  • Fail – the number of lenders who have a ‘hard’ fail on any of the search criteria

  • Missing data – the number of lenders that have not provided information for the specified search criteria.

Note: these lenders will still be included in the sourcing results but shown as having missing data and therefore requiring users to check with the lender on the specific criteria.

The filters above can then be applied to the mortgage search.

If the user wishes to amend or add to any of the filters, this can be done by selecting the Edit Filters button which will return the user to Criteria Brain. Criteria Brain will remember the initially chosen filters allowing the user to add, delete or amend them.

If the user does not wish to apply any of the filters, this can be done by selecting the Clear Filters button which will remove the ticks from the filters but leave them visible on the screen.

The Help button within the Criteria Brain filters screen gives an explanation of the terminology used.

Having progressed into the scheme list window, there is now an additional column titled Criteria Match. The column contains amber warning triangles or green ticks. The green ticks indicate that the filters have passed the lenders underwriting criteria. An amber triangle indicates that the lender may have passed some filters, but others may have a policy warning which needs to be checked by the user.

By clicking on the Details tab, two new Criteria Brain tiles are now displayed which contain all of the information on the filters applied within Criteria Brain.

The filters are listed in the left hand tile and colour coded depending on whether they have passed or have warnings. By selecting each criteria in turn, it will change the information section in the right hand tile, easily allowing the user to see the information provided by the lender.

There is also the option to ‘Change Criteria’ which allows the user to link back into Criteria Brain to amend any of the filters. The associated PDF document can also be viewed from here.

The New Search function within sourcing allows the user to carry out different sourcing scenarios switching the filters on and off for each source if required.

The Unmatched schemes clearly indicates the reason that the product does not fit the client requirements.

Having progressed through to the illustration documentation, the filters letter contains a list of the filters applied from Criteria Brain.

The full supporting PDF document containing all of the lenders responses also accompanies the illustration documentation and is saved against the client file for compliance checking.

Other Enhancements

Customisation of Columns within the Product Selection Report (Filters Letter)

Following a number of requests from brokers, there is now the ability to customise the column order of the product table included within the Product Selection Report which is produced as part of the Illustration documentation.

Within the Tools section of the Scheme List, highlighted below, you will see the Settings function. The new feature within this section is the Product Selection Report set up.

Columns to be included in the report can be selected by using the left and right arrow buttons to move them to and from the Selected Columns box. The order of the columns can also be determined by using the up and down arrow buttons. All columns display a character length, which is important as there is a character limit within the table to enable it to be printed on an A4 page.

As the columns are selected, the default character length will start to reduce. At any stage, by using the Preview button, this will display the current set up which can then be amended, if required, before setting it as the user default. The column order or display can be amended at any time.

Repayment Strategy

The 'Sale of mortgaged property', as a repayment strategy, has been added for interest only and split mortgages. Although the FCA are not so keen on this for normal residential mortgages, this is a legitimate repayment reason for BTL mortgages. It is also a valid repayment reason for residential 'Retirement Interest only' mortgages and some lenders (e.g. Halifax) will allow this for normal residential mortgages provided that there is a minimum amount of equity in the property.

Filters Letter

We have added Current Lender; Outstanding balance; Existing monthly payment and Cost to redeem existing loan now to the filters letter. The first two in particular affect the filtering of retention and switching products; the Existing monthly payment is important for second charge comparisons and the final one affects the remortgage saving calculations.

ESIS text changes

The Supervisor section of the ESIS (usually Section 14) included the following fixed text:

This lender is supervised by the Financial Conduct Authority, www.fca.org.uk

Some lenders requested this to be extended to say:

This lender is supervised by the Financial Conduct Authority, www.fca.org.uk and the Prudential Regulation Authority www.bankofengland.co.uk

Following a review of the MCOB rules to ensure this is acceptable, we have now made this change to the ESIS document.

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