I recently read Stephen Knight's "Creator and Trader", which is the story behind his UK mortgage company Private Label, which eventually became part of GMAC-RFC's International Business Group.
In the book Stephen describes how the UK mortgage has matured through the years mainly due to the role of intermediaries, which are called "Packagers", and via technology. Stephen is a huge proponent of utilizing technology to improve the mortgage lending process. GMAC-RFC UK was one of the first lenders to utilize an automated decisioning engine, based on the AssetWise service built by GMAC-RFC in the US. However he took it to another level by combining the power of AVM's (automated valuation models) to give customers a binding offer at the point of sale.
This still is a revolutionary concept for many firms and there is still much debate in the US regarding the use of AVM's as part of mortgage products. AVM's are basically means of automating the home appraisal process. They are similar in concept to the consumer site Zillow. By not requiring a human appraiser to do a "drive-by" of the home to determine it's value the mortgage process can be accelerated.
Some argue that AVM's are not as effective or accurate as manual appraisals. This can be true if there are not a lot of comparable homes in the vicinity which have recent sales data. However manual apparaisals, much like manual underwriting, is also fraught with issues. Many home valuations in the Pocono resort communities near Philadelphia were wildly out of wack due to shady appraisal practices and outright fraud.
Stephen is also quite a character. He is kind of a British Angelo Mozilo, with a better sense of humor and a worse tan. In his book he relates the story of walking through Countrywide's offices which had a lot of rubber floors and commenting that the last time he saw that much rubber was at one of Godfrey Blight's parties. Apparently Angelo wasn't amused but I found the remark brilliant (hopefully the folks at BofA improve the sense of humor out there in Calabasas).
I only met Stephen once when I was visiting the UK and only for one meeting. However, I spent some time with Barry Searle one of his three key team members. Barry is quite a guy in his own right - although he has some strange notion that Fulham has a great soccer (football) team.
Stephen and Barry are now starting up a new firm called Checkmate Mortgages. I wish them all the best.
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