Wait a minute as Abbey speeds up mortgage deals

Abbey National plans to revolutionise the way mortgage brokers sell its home loans with an internet system that could allow approvals within 60 seconds.

The new Abbey service will involve 10,000 mortgage brokers gaining access to its new, "intelligent" mortgage introducer internet service at a cost of £5m.

Ambrose McGinn, director of retail e-commerce at Abbey, said that by using the system a mortgage intermediary should be able to speed up the process of arranging mortgage.

He admitted that if it proved successful it had implications for "low value" jobs which are connected to processing and filling in mortgage application forms.

The system will also be a model for the bank's push into the stakeholder pension market later in the year, where direct sales and on-site marketing, whether in the workplace or in the home, is considered important.

"We'll have an e-commerce facility for that too," Mr McGinn said. He claimed that the bank already had guarantees of £3bn of mortgage business from "key introducers" over the new online service.

"With 50% of our mortgage business supplied by intermediaries, the new introducer internet services will respond to all improvements that our contacts have been crying out for, namely speed of service, flexibility regarding time availability and up to the minute tracking of customers' cases," he said.

Abbey said that while the new system could mean a "decision in principle" would be made in a minute, it calculates it could take 10 minutes from "start to decision", still an improvement on the three hours that is the norm at present.

The service will provide real time tracking of cases throughout the process between 8am and 10pm, seven days a week, and aims to scrap any unnecessarily filling-in of forms.

John Malone, the national mortgage manager at Scottish Amicable, added: "It's an impressive online service. Buying a home or moving is one of the biggest events in anyone's life so we encourage anything that makes that process easier."