Case Study: First direct streamlines mortgage journeys with Lightico

Streamlining First Direct’s Mortgage Journey

first direct, a subsidiary of HSBC and a branchless bank serving more than 1.7 million customers, wanted to streamline its mortgage journey. Its telephone-led application process was creating long, manual steps, including post-call email packs, separate document portals, and manual indexing, which increased costs and caused customer frustration. Lightico was brought in to help modernize the mortgage advice and application experience.

Lightico implemented a digital mortgage workflow that collects customer information before the advisory session, verifies users via email and SMS OTP, uses a unified case ID for ongoing document collection, and integrates Adobe Sign for e-signatures in one seamless journey. The result was a 48-hour reduction in application journey time, up to £120m in lending facilitated per month, and a 78% reduction in complaints related to evidential documents.

First direct