Habito, the online mortgage broker and lender, has announced the launch of an API that allows its strategic partners’ customers to use Habito’s proprietary whole-of-market mortgage search algorithm and its mortgage calculation tools, from inside the partner’s app.
The API allows homeowners to work out exactly how much they could save by remortgaging and switching their deal, while first time buyers can see how much they can afford to borrow and what their monthly payments could look like.
Habito’s first two partners to use the API – Landlord Studio and Emma – will be using it for buy-to-let remortgaging and residential remortgaging respectively.
Habito’s API helps customers looking to buy their first home or remortgage to a better deal
Remortgaging is a huge issue for UK consumers. Habito’s research with University of Manchester’s Economics Department found that over 50% of all homeowners are needlessly overpaying on their mortgage by around £300 a month or £3,700 a year, because they weren’t switching to a cheaper deal. Collectively, this mortgage switching inertia is costing the nation nearly £15.5 billion a year.
Daniel Hegarty, Founder and CEO at Habito said: “There are lots of reasons why someone might put off remortgaging – including because they believe the process is too time consuming or anxiety-ridden. But it really is worth it – our research found that customers are happy to invest 20 minutes of their time to make as little as £60 worth of savings, but, with mortgages, the potential savings are much, much higher.
Habito is here to make switching your mortgage as easy as switching your energy or broadband provider, so that you can avoid slipping onto your lender’s costly Standard Variable Rate (SVR) and avoid unnecessary stress. It’s great that we can now bring our innovative tools and solutions to our partners, in-app, and together, can help consumers avoid mortgage hell.”
“We fundamentally believe the world needs an advocate that sits between our users and their financial products, with the only goal of helping people improve their financial health.”
Edoardo Moreni, CEO at Emma said: “Emma is on a mission to change the way consumers relate to money. We fundamentally believe the world needs an advocate that sits between our users and their financial products, with the only goal of helping people improve their financial health. Partnering with Habito means getting closer to this mission and adding further momentum to a movement of more than 100,000 people in the UK alone.”
Habito’s API will appear inside the partner’s app as a simple set of questions for a customer to fill in about their existing mortgage deal. That data will then be fed into Habito’s algorithm which searches the whole of the market – from over 20,000 products – to find the best mortgage deal and work out how much the customer could save.
The search returns those deals which are considered “best” according to their true cost. This ‘true cost’ calculation includes both the product’s interest rate, but also considers additional factors such as fees and incentives such as cashback, free legals or free valuations.
These mortgage product suggestions can give customers a strong indication of what their new deal could look like, and allow them to search for suitable properties if their a first time buyer, or get their paperwork in order if they’re remortgaging, to make a full application. To continue their mortgage or remortgage, they would then need to create an account with Habito and speak to one of its mortgage experts via live chat.
