Credit Suisse is to launch the UK’s first fully online mortgage service through its subsidiary Promise.
Promise will initially focus on remortgages which it intends to approve within 15 minutes of carrying out online credit checks. The mortgages will incur no application, approval or survey fees and Credit Suisse will pay the legal fees.
The move is a bid to pre-empt plans by two listed internet companies to develop online mortgage supermarkets. American group E-Loan has already successfully launched such a venture in the States and has secured £13.8m to rollout the programme here. Its main rival is eXchange which plans to launch a service selling its own and other banks’ loans by the end of the year.
Financial Times 13/09/99 page 13
