Mortgage broker task management software

There is a difference between knowing what is happening to your cases and knowing what you personally have to do today. Case systems are good at the first. They are frequently poor at the second, which is why so many advisers run a private list on paper alongside a platform the firm paid for.

If your team keeps a shadow list, that is diagnostic information, not a failure of discipline. It means the system's task layer does not match how the work arrives.

Four kinds of task, which behave differently

Most task tools treat everything as one type of object. Brokerage work is not like that.

Waiting-on tasks are the largest category. You are not doing anything; you are checking whether someone else has. Chasing a valuation, waiting on an underwriter, waiting for a solicitor. These need a check date and a person to check, and they recur until resolved.

Do-now tasks are yours to complete. Key the application, write the suitability report, call the client back.

Deadline tasks have a hard date attached that is not yours to move. Product reservation expiry, offer expiry, exchange date, a network reporting deadline.

Watch tasks fire months or years ahead. Rate expiry, annual protection review, a client who said to call after their probation ends.

Bundle these into one undifferentiated list and it becomes unreadable, because a task due in fourteen months sits next to a call you should make in twenty minutes.

The failure mode: task debt

The most common way a task system dies is volume. Automation creates tasks on every stage change. Nobody clears them, because half do not apply to this case. Within two months the list has four hundred items, people stop reading it, and genuine deadlines are lost inside the noise.

Once a list is untrusted it is very hard to rehabilitate, because everyone has already built a private workaround.

Two rules prevent this. Every automated task must have a named owner at the moment it is created, never a queue. And any task type that gets dismissed without action more than about a third of the time should be deleted from the configuration rather than tolerated.

Audit this at three months. Count what was completed, what was dismissed and what expired unattended. The expired column is the one that tells you whether the system is working.

Building the daily view

The screen that matters is one adviser's list for one day, containing do-now tasks, deadline tasks due within a week, and waiting-on tasks whose check date has arrived. Nothing else.

If your platform cannot produce that view, find out whether it can before assuming it cannot — it is often available and simply not configured, because implementations default to showing everything.

Make it the first screen people see when they log in. A view nobody navigates to is a view nobody uses.

Generic tools versus the platform

Firms sometimes reach for a general project tool — a board with columns, cards and checklists — because it is flexible and cheap. It works for internal projects and it is a poor fit for case work.

The reason is that a card is not a client. It has no fact find, no documents, no audit trail, and no connection to the record a file reviewer will want to see. You end up maintaining the same case in two places, and the two disagree.

There is one legitimate use: firm-level work that is not case work. Recruiting, a website rebuild, compliance projects, the annual insurance renewal. Keeping those out of the case system is sensible.

For anything attached to a client, keep tasks where the case lives.

Handover and cover

Tasks are how absence is survived. When an adviser is off, someone needs to be able to take their list for a week without excavating an inbox.

Test this deliberately rather than discovering it during a crisis. Pick a quiet week, have one person work another's tasks, and note every point where they had to ask a question. Those points are the gaps in your task descriptions.

The usual finding is that tasks are written in shorthand only their author understands. "Chase Nationwide" means nothing to a colleague. "Chase Nationwide underwriting on the Patel case, spoke to Dan on Tuesday, he was checking the gifted deposit letter" is a task someone else can pick up.

What to ask a supplier

Can tasks be created automatically on stage change, and can we configure which ones? Can a task belong to a case and a person simultaneously? Can we see all tasks for a client across multiple cases? Can tasks be reassigned in bulk? Do overdue tasks escalate to anyone, and is that configurable? Does the system distinguish a due date from a check date?

That last question sounds pedantic and is not. Waiting-on tasks need a date you look again, and a system with only hard due dates will show a permanent wall of red.

Confirm current capability with the vendor; task functionality varies considerably between UK broker platforms and changes with releases.

The measure

A month after any change, ask each person whether they still keep a separate list. If they do, ask what is on it. That answer is the specification for what you should fix next, and it is far more reliable than any satisfaction survey.