Hi-tech mortgage aid breaks down barriers

WHAT do mortgages and the Tom Cruise film Minority Report have in common?

The answer, thanks to an Edinburgh University student, is futuristic touch-screen technology, which in the case of mortgages will allow home buyers and their advisers to play about with complex information to help them find the right deal.

Just as Cruise used giant touch-screens to access information in the 2002 science fiction film, the software written by Kate Ho's Interface3 company allows borrowers to move graphs and figures around the screen.

The interactive software lets customers compare different types of mortgage - from fixed-rates and trackers through to interest-only products - all on the one screen. Borrowers can easily change the variables, such as the length of the loan or monthly repayments, to compare the prices they would pay.

Ho, who was born in Hong Kong and moved to Scotland when she was six, won Royal Bank of Scotland's Touch Finance competition with the software.

The interactive mortgage calculator will be on show on 11 November at an open day in Edinburgh, hosted by consultancy firm User Visions as part of "world userability day".

Ho told The Scotsman: "I sat down with my friends and talked about what the most complicated financial services products were and how I could simplify the process.

"The mortgage calculator means that customers and advisors can gather around a table to talk about loans. It removes the barrier of the desk and computer sitting between them and gives the customer more control over all the mortgage options."

Away from work, Ho is heavily involved in Geek Girls, a group for women interested in technology, and plays prop for Watsonians rugby club.

Stephen Denning, senior user experience consultant at User Vision - which tests everything from websites to packaging to make sure they can be easily used by customers - said it was important that new products like Ho's mortgage calculator were being developed.

He said: "It's essential that products like mortgages are made as simply to understand as possible. With a lot of purchases, customers have an excited emotional reaction.

"But when it comes to financial services products - especially big purchases like mortgages - then customers can often be frightened or nervous.

"Anything that can removed that fear has got to be a good thing."

Ho's software was aslo used to create an interactive terminal at the Edinburgh International Science Festival and, last month, her company won a contract with Bristol-based theatre Sandbox.

Interface3 is one of the final companies to be born out of the Edinburgh Pre-incubator Scheme (Epis), which has helped to launch businesses including Pufferfish, which makes 3D screens used at Coldplay concerts, and waste water treatment firm H2Ology.