Mortgage cases often slip out of view once the offer is issued. Some continue as planned, others fall away early, and many move more slowly than anyone expects, yet the lender has no visibility to see which is which. Without a structured view of the post-offer stage, updates arrive late or are non-existent, and a case that has stalled can appear identical to one that is progressing. This lack of transparency slows decisions, masks early risks and makes it harder to protect case conversion at the point where it matters most.
The scale of the problem becomes clearer when viewed against wider market data. Recent findings show that more than half of buyers and sellers have faced a chain collapse, estimating around 49,000 such cases in the past year. The causes range from delays and slow searches to unanswered questions and late changes of mind. Conveyancers may be waiting for a buyer or a search result, yet none of this is visible unless someone request for an update. Buyers may pause for reasons that seem minor, but these pauses still push timelines back without any signal reaching the lender. With so much activity taking place out of sight, it becomes difficult to distinguish between a case that is still moving and one that has quietly slipped beyond recovery.
This uncertainty feeds directly into case conversion. Treasury teams rely on expected completion dates that assume steady progress, yet those dates only hold value when lenders have accurate information about how cases are moving. When cases drift without warning, funding becomes harder to plan and harder to allocate, and case conversion suffers as more transactions fall out of the pipeline without timely intervention. The financial impact of even a small improvement in conversion is far from minor; the value tied up in each unrecovered case is significant, and the cumulative impact across a full pipeline is larger still.
A structured view of the post-offer stage provides a clearer path. When lenders can see which tasks are complete, which are outstanding and where a delay has formed, they can respond earlier and with more precision. This reduces guesswork, improves planning and helps maintain momentum at stages where cases are most at risk. It also supports a more aligned approach with conveyancers, since both sides gain a shared understanding of what needs attention.
Query handling shows this well. Post-valuation queries (PVQs) often take longer than expected because the information provided at the start is incomplete. When details are captured in a consistent and structured way, resolution times shorten and lenders gain a more accurate sense of where the blockage sits. The same principle applies to document checks, signatures and tasks such as AML and KYC. When these steps are handled in a predictable way, errors reduce and progress becomes clearer.
Structured platforms also position lenders to benefit from wider improvements across the market. As digital identity, upfront data, better sharing between conveyancers and efforts to ease search delays gain traction, lenders with modern workflow systems will be able to adopt these changes more easily. This will reduce fragility across chains, shorten key stages and support a more predictable route to completion, all of which strengthen conversion.
The aim is not to stop every case from falling away. It is to ensure lenders see the early signs of drift, act before issues settle in and avoid losing cases simply because the information arrived too late. With clearer insight, lenders can adjust funding plans, respond sooner, support conveyancers at the right moment and know when a borrower has withdrawn before the delay spreads across the pipeline. In a market where every completed case carries weight, early sight of movement can be the difference between a manageable correction and a lost opportunity.
