Dashly, whose roadmap already includes home insurance and utilities, also has the potential to kill comparison sites as we know them — and finally pass power back into the hands of the consumer. “I think once people have used Dashly for the first time they will no longer have the need to visit a traditional price comparison portal again”, says Hagger.

With Dashly, consumers are automatically alerted the moment it pays to switch to another mortgage without having to lift a finger or manually update their mortgage data.

In his report, Hagger asks: “Isn’t this service on offer already? The simple answer is no. Yes, there are other robo-type providers carrying out remortgage comparisons, but they don’t offer the same level of ‘always-on’ automation.

“Dashly automatically updates your mortgage balance, remaining term, LTV and property valuation on a monthly basis - whereas Trussle, for example, requires the customer to log back in and update their information every three months — it’s a big difference.
“While it’s simple to compare credit cards and savings accounts, a regular trawl of the mortgage market is nigh on impossible without an automated tool such as Dashly - it’s taking the mortgage comparison site benefits to another level and is something more fit for purpose in this fintech-enabled era.”

Crucially, Dashly is shifting the focus of the traditional mortgage search away from the end of fixed rate periods. Instead, it scans the market every day and alerts homeowners whenever it pays to switch after all anticipated switching costs — e.g. legal, product and early repayment fees — have been taken into account. And it does this even if there are years left on a borrower’s current mortgage deal.

Only it has the power to do this as, unlike traditional human brokers and the existing ranks of robo-brokers, Dashly is ‘always-on’, comparing 000’s of products from every lender, every day and continuously testing them against a homeowner’s unique circumstances — such as their mortgage rate, property value, loan-to-value (LTV) and declining mortgage balance.

The sophistication of its algorithms is such that Dashly is in the FCA sandbox because the alerts it sends to its users, according to the Regulator, constitute fully automated advice. Due to its sandbox status, Dashly is restricting the number of people it onboards each week and some prospective users may be asked to join a waitlist.

Some existing robo-brokers already claim to alert borrowers when it pays to switch to a cheaper deal. In reality, this ‘veneer-ware’ still relies on calendar-based alerts that tell brokers when fixed-rate deals are close to expiring, or is dependent on the customer manually updating their information. This is not automation and does not solve inertia.

Dashly is free to use, takes minutes to set up and enables homeowners to sit back and know they’ll never miss out on another great mortgage rate again.

And when a homeowner decides to take out a mortgage found by Dashly — either direct or with the help of a fee-free, independent Dashly broker — it restarts the mortgage comparison process the very next day. Always on, never off.

Ross Boyd, Founder, Dashly, comments:
“Today’s technology means there’s no need to manually compare the market for a mortgage ever again. Dashly does this for you, testing every mortgage against your unique circumstances every day, regardless of whether you have been on your current deal for two days, two weeks or two years.

“While the robo-brokers have introduced new technology to streamline and sex up the mortgage application process, for us the real problem is helping people to save money on their mortgage when they are not looking and without them having to lift a finger. That’s what solves the real problem, which is consumer inertia.
“To require a customer to manually update their own information in the age of open banking is both antiquated and absurd.

“Dashly only needs setting up once but it will continue to serve homeowners for the rest of their lives. This is bringing genuine innovation to the industry, solving mortgage apathy and finally putting the consumer in control by replacing active comparison with infinitely more powerful passive comparison. Why compare the market if the market can compare you?”