Money Dashboard have launched a mortgage calculator which it hopes will enable its users to find a cheaper mortgage.
The tool has been developed over the past year, and will use the data Money Dashboard gathers about a users expenditure to provide an “affordability profile”.
In order to ensure this is as accurate as possible, you’ll need to ensure that you’ve added all your relevant current accounts and credit card accounts to Money Dashboard – and then make sure that all the transactions have accurate tags/categories attached.
You’ll then get an estimate of what a lender will be prepared to lend to you. At this point if you wish to find out about specific mortgage products available to you, Money Dashboard will refer you to a FCA regulated mortgage broker.
It’s likely that we’ll see more tools like this launched by the personal financial management sites as they look to generate income for themselves, analysing the data they have available from your linked accounts and then offering products based on what they’ve learned.
The key to whether this succeeds or fails will be in how this is executed; if it is done in a seemless and non-intrusive way, then it could become a significant benefit to the PFM user – finding cheaper deals on, for example, credit cards, or better savings rates. If however it simply becomes a “lead generator” for third parties to start chasing you to take out their products then it will be a return to the “dark ages” of financial marketing.