The reality is of course very different.

At Kensington, for example, we have invested heavily in real people over the past couple of years; mortgage experts that are available on the end of the phone, by fax or post to personally assist intermediaries in their search for the right mortgage products for their clients.

But we have not neglected technology either. Kensington’s website is the award-winning heart of a sophisticated eCommerce system designed with a single aim – to make dealing with us as convenient and straightforward as possible.

And that is the real difference between the two schools of thought. It’s not about technology per se, but how technology is used to bring benefits to the broker and ultimately the borrower. Technology should be seen as an enabler, a tool that eases the process and helps build stronger relationships between lenders, brokers and consumers.

Take Kensington’s K-Link system for example, which allows packagers to connect to our eCommerce platform and enable them to provide their brokers with KFIs and binding decisions directly from our system.

It’s an innovative use of technology, but it was developed with the premise that many brokers still like to use packagers because of their expert and extensive knowledge of the specialist knowledge of the specialist lending sector. By creating K-Link our aim was to help packagers add value to the service they offer and therefore help them to strengthen those relationships – which in turn will help Kensington build its own relationships and reputation with intermediaries and ultimately borrowers.

The same is true of the automated valuations (AVMs) and electronic identification (e-IDs) that Kensington has introduced as part of its K-net eCommerce platform. These initiatives are offered free of charge to brokers and enable us to instruct an AVM on a property and automatically check the identity of the applicants, speeding up the application process.

But this innovation is just part of whole mix of technology and human input – because what’s the use of being able to process an application in just a few days, if a good number of customers are turned down because a lender’s computerised system is not intuitive enough to cope with criteria that is slightly out of the norm.

The important point here is that technology should not be used for its own sake, or at the expense of real people, because they form an important part of the whole mortgage ecosystem. So much of what we do is based on trust: trust that the broker will give the customer best advice and trust that the lender with provide a excellent service and make good on their mortgage offer.

Taking humans out of that ecosystem and relying totally on technology to cut costs to the bone may seem good on paper, but when there is a hiccup and the system breaks down, that sense of trust will be at risk and relationships will be damaged.

Without those relationships, if a provider is not seen as reliable or dependable, even lenders offering the most headline grabbing rates will be hard pushed to convince brokers and consumers to take a chance on them.