Redesigning the first-time buyer mortgage journey.

Danske bank had a successful £2.5Bn mortgage book and wanted to increase their attention on the first time buyer market. Initial exploration showed a significant volume of mortgage applications being started with few being completed to submission. Those that were submitted had high error counts resulting in a large number of meetings & calls by the mortgages support team. Information was overwhelming, with over 40 different mortgage products and KYC/AML legislation making the applying process long and tedious.

We knew that getting customers a ‘Decision in Principle’ (DIP) significantly increased the chances of customers taking a mortgage with Danske. We rebuilt the application form to prioritise the information needed to run a soft credit search, matched against eligibility and lending criteria. This stripped back the UX and streamlined a complex user flow to make finding and applying for products a lot easier.

Insight: Mortgage Calculators Are Key;

We noticed from data analysis that users who used the mortgage calculator before their application had a substantially higher chance of 1. Starting the mortgage application journey and 2. Successfully completing the journey. Causation or correlation? Who cares! The mortgage calculator was buried deep into the site map and was a clunky experience. We redesigned it and ensured it appeared at the right place and the right time of the user’s education journey.