How Freedom Finance uses Nivo to improve customer experience and streamline processes with Lenders

Freedom Finance’s mission is to help its customers to easily access the best loan or mortgage for them based on their circumstances. Before partnering with Nivo, Freedom Finance was mainly a telephone-based lending platform, with 95% of business activity coming from telephone sales.

The Challenge

Freedom Finance experienced a 50% drop-off at the callback stage. Customers first would find the lending platform online, would fill in their information, and request a call-back. In returning the call, they often would call at an inconvenient time, would miss them, or the client would be served by another provider. Operational processes were expensive over time, such as information gathering on the phone and arranging couriers for contracts to be wet signed.

Passing a customer and their data to a lender was a tedious process involving post, email, couriers, and telephone and could take several days. Security and compliance restrictions made it difficult for Freedom Finance to further streamline its processes digitally to improve customer experience and speed of delivery.

The Solution

Nivo was an ideal solution for Freedom Finance, not only because of the speed, security, and flexibility it allows but also because of the ease at which it can be integrated into current systems and processes, partially or completely.

Nivo was implemented into the user journey after the user fills in all of their personal information on the Freedom Finance website. Once they submit it, they will be taken to a page where they can choose how they want to proceed to the next stage. They can either download Nivo (highlighted as the quickest and most secure), call Freedom Finance, or receive a call-back. Following this choice, the majority of users download the app. From there, they can speak to the brokerage with instant messaging at their convenience, reducing the 50% drop-off rate from the traditional process.

Throughout the users’ journey, applicants can pause and continue at their own pace through the use of automation and mobile-based identity verification.

Freedom Finance was also able to remove expensive and time-consuming steps in their process because of the extra layer of security that mobile-based ID&V brings, including e-signing capabilities replacing the need to send a courier. Inefficiencies at the later stages of the deal were also slickened using Nivo’s B2B messaging with the lender. Files, reports, and documentation can be shared with the lender instantly, with everything housed in one place.

The Results

Joshua Bowe, Head of Digital Operations, Freedom Finance stated:

“There are benefits to using Nivo that you don’t even realise until you go live. The implementation and integration times were short. It’s very, very quick to go live. We wish we started a lot sooner.”

Nivo allowed Freedom Finance to operate a much slicker process that shaved days off the time it takes to deliver a deal. An average reduction of 8 days per case was saved from the advancements in onboarding and an additional 3-4 days from the efficiency improvements with the lender using B2B messaging. The enhancements in speed and customer experience reduced dropout opportunities throughout the advisor journey.

Nivo also delivered value through cost savings. By replacing their reliance on couriers with e-signing, Freedom Finance saved over £24,000 a year from courier costs. With identity verification, income and expenditure, and additional data capture completed prior to advisor interaction, advisors could serve 300% more customers with the same headcount with completed loan volumes up significantly over the offline process.

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