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Acre Affordability - How One Broker Saves an Hour Every Day

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Automating affordability can save an hour out of a broker's day.

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Another week, another rate rise

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With six base rate changes in the last nine months, it seems like the lenders are sent scrabbling to revise all their products almost every time we’re ready to recommend one for a case.

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On top of that, recent changes to the Bank’s affordability rules have added to the general state of flux and seem to have given a licence to lenders to constantly change their own definition of what is, and isn’t, affordable for our clients. Indeed, the variability in bank or building society’s affordability assessments has increased greatly recently, and we expect it to continue to do so.

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It was only a couple of years ago that I spent an afternoon with one of our early clients watching how he was handling cases (an important part of how we learn how to make the best possible mortgage software for brokers). He spent upwards of an hour of that time repeatedly keying the same case into different banks’ intermediary portals to try and find one that was willing to lend to a particular client.

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‍From that pain, Acre Sourcing’s in-built, automated affordability was born.

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Every time a case is loaded into sourcing, we apply our state-of-the-art product and criteria filters to the results. But we don’t stop there. We also call out to over fifty lenders, to get the most accurate assessments of how much each is prepared to lend. No estimates, no guesses based on income multiples and most importantly, no rekeying.

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Best of all, it takes less than 30 seconds to get a comprehensive set of answers – and when that’s done, you can exclude all the unaffordable options in a single click. What better way to ensure you’re recommending the right product for the customers?

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How does it work, you ask?

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We’ve integrated with BrokerSense to provide this seamless experience. Their technology quite literally types in the case details to each bank’s website and takes a screenshot, so you have the proof of research you need. You won’t need a separate account or login to take advantage of this –

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Acre’s taken care of it. And that’s not the only thing we’ve taken care of – we’ve also covered the bill for you, so your affordability searches are included within your overall subscription.

So, whilst we can’t control interest rates or how often lenders feel like changing their rules, we can take one of the most boring and laborious tasks in the typical broker’s day and automate it for you so you can get back to doing what you do best – finding the right new mortgage for your clients.

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As for the original broker who spent so long keying affordability, he assures me he’s now saving an hour a day on average. Just think about what you could do with that time back in your life.

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Learn more

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Want to know more about how you could be saving time and money whilst providing better advice for your customers? Book a demo of the Acre system today by clicking here.

Acre is now Score

What's changed?

What's changing is the name and the way we look. Acre is now trading as Score, with a fresh brand identity to match, but everything you rely on stays exactly where it is. It's still the same mortgage all-in-one platform that advisors, firms, and networks across the country already use to grow their businesses, now presented under a name that brings us in line with the wider ClearScore Group.

Why the new name?

ClearScore acquired Acre earlier this year, and we've carried plenty of momentum into life as part of the Group since. Moving to the Score brand is a natural next step, because it brings us in line with ClearScore and reflects the mission we share, which is to make home buying quicker and easier and to help people take control of their financial lives. As our founder and Managing Director Justus Brown has put it, the day-to-day service you receive won't change at all, and bringing our brand together with the Group simply makes that shared mission clearer.

Has the mission changed?

Not in the slightest! We have always been here to make home buying quicker and easier, taking the pain out of the process so that people can get into their homes sooner, and that is exactly what we will keep doing, with a good deal more behind us now to do it well.

Will the service change?

No, it won't, you'll continue working with the same platform and the same people, and your existing contracts and commercial terms stay exactly as they are, still held with the same legal entity, Acre Platforms Limited. Our Customer Success team will keep looking after you just as they do today.

About ClearScore

Who is ClearScore?

The ClearScore Group is a global leader in financial marketplaces, helping over 27 million people access credit, insurance, and other financial products with greater transparency, fairness, and control. It founded its flagship UK credit marketplace in 2015, has since expanded across four continents and into new verticals such as its DriveScore app, and now works with over 200 partners worldwide. ClearScore is profitable, growing, and on a mission to make personal finance clearer, calmer, and easier to understand, and that mission runs right through its culture, along with a genuine belief in giving people more clarity and control over their money.

How do we fit into ClearScore?

We sit alongside ClearScore's other technology platforms, including D•One, its open banking service for lenders, together powering borrowing and home lending across unsecured credit, auto finance, and now mortgages.

What does the change
unlock?

What does joining ClearScore bring?

Joining ClearScore gives us a great deal more room to grow. With their backing, we can accelerate our technology roadmap and bring new AI-powered features to the platform faster than we could before, and we can enrich what we build with ClearScore's proprietary data and insights, getting cutting-edge technology into the hands of mortgage and protection businesses sooner.

What do brokers and firms stand to gain?

For the brokers and firms who use us, it really comes down to growing faster. Drawing on ClearScore's financial power and its UK user base of over 16 million, we can build the features you ask for more quickly and bring more leads into the ecosystem, which gives brokers, networks, and advisors more opportunities to win new business.

Is the business growing?

We're growing quickly, and so are the firms who build their business on the platform. Since the acquisition, we've seen record numbers of monthly mortgage submissions come through Score, and we've more than doubled our revenue year on year, with growth of over 2.5x. That momentum is showing up in our customers' businesses too: firms on the platform are saving each broker around four days a month on application processing, identifying protection needs for 85% of their mortgage clients, and doubling their client conversion rates. Delivering results like these takes serious engineering and serious investment, and with ClearScore behind us we can keep raising that bar at a pace few others in the market can match.

Why build your business on Score?

Because you'll be choosing a platform that is built to last. A lot of new mortgage tools have appeared lately, and many of them are small, pop-up CRMs put together quickly on basic AI, the kind of thing that can disappear just as fast as it arrived. Score is a very different proposition, we are an established, whole-of-market platform that brokers, networks, and advisors across the country already trust with their businesses, and we are now backed by one of the most advanced and reliable fintech stacks in the industry through ClearScore. A proven platform, real investment, and genuine scale mean we can keep powering ahead of newer, lighter-weight tools and keep building for the long term.

Independence and
ownership

Is Acre being absorbed into ClearScore?

No. We operate as an independent business unit within the ClearScore Group, with our full management team staying exactly where they are, and we'll carry on supporting mortgage and protection firms with the same data-driven platform, now with the reach and scale of the wider Group behind us.

Will our advice-first philosophy change?

No. We have always believed that the best mortgage decisions come from high-quality, personal advice, and it is a belief ClearScore shares. If anything, the direction the market is heading only reinforces it, which is why we will stay a whole-of-market platform focused on helping brokers do their very best work for their clients.

Your data

Is my data safe?

Yes, and nothing about the move to Score changes that. Your data, and your clients' data, is protected by exactly the same contractual obligations and technical safeguards as before, and being part of ClearScore does not give anyone new access to it. We will never introduce your customers to a third party without the right consent, and your clients always keep the rights to their own data. If anything, joining a group whose entire business is built on handling data responsibly, and only ever with the user's permission, raises the bar we hold ourselves to.

The best way to see what Score can do is to book a demo, and we'll walk you through the platform and how it could work for your firm. If you'd rather drop us a line, you can reach our sales team at sales@scoremortgage.com, or send any general enquiries to hello@scoremortgage.com.