Eighty-five per cent of online mortgage applications made by intermediaries to Alliance & Leicester receive an agreement in principal in less than 60 seconds, the bank has revealed.
This compares with a 48 hour turnaround time for paper applications, Alliance & Leicester adds.
The difference in timing can prove critical, Alliance & Leicester points out, for people looking to wrap up a property deal quickly.
"Both intermediaries and consumers will benefit from a quick decision to their mortgage needs," said Mehrdad Yousefi, head of intermediary mortgages at Alliance & Leicester.
"Our system has enhanced the whole mortgage application process for intermediaries, providing quicker decisions, faster processing, easy tracking of cases and less paperwork," he added.
Alliance & Leicester adds that when cases cannot be decided in the 60 second time period, a fully credited decision is communicated within 60 minutes securely via the messaging facility on the bank's website.
