Mandeep Sodhi is an entrepreneur and visionary who has diligently applied himself to acquire the necessary skills to execute his industry disrupting ideas.
After graduating with distinctions for his Executive MBA, gaining a wealth of experience in banking and launching two online businesses, Mandeep saw an opportunity to drive some much-needed change within the mortgage space and launched HashChing.
Now as CEO of the thriving startup, Mandeep undertakes multiple roles within the company as necessary, primarily working across both HR and technology. Mandeep supports all departments and facilitates clear communication between them.
Integrity underpins the entire business, with strategy based on mutually benefiting all involved parties and having positive social outcomes. He also makes sure that the choices he makes and the deals he facilitates are transparent, backed with data and reliable.
In a conversation with the CEO of HashChing, Mandeep talks about the company, its services, and the ways in which the company is creating a major impact in the industry.
HashChing is Australia’s first online mortgage marketplace that allows customers to access home loan deals without having to shop around. Free for consumers, we connect them directly with verified mortgage brokers nation-wide who negotiate better rates from lenders.
Our initial idea was oriented around making the competitive rates that were exclusively available to brokers accessible to the public. This meant two things, we had to be digital and we had to have the support of brokers in order to progress beyond what existing comparison sites had achieved.
Initially it was the seamless alignment of the technology roadmap and business roadmap that got the HashChing idea off the ground. My co-founder was able to develop technology solutions to the objectives I developed and together we created an action path.
We workshopped ideas around what a virtual mortgage marketplace would look like and how to ensure brokers were going to be motivated to deliver us optimal results. We began exploring all kinds of technological solutions and HashChing quickly evolved into the platform we have today.
Our platform now uses predictive analytics and geo-targeting for automated matchmaking between borrowers and brokers, machine learning to rank brokers based on customer feedback and other gathered metrics, dynamic ratings and review interfaces and Australia’s first virtual verification of identity platform, meaning mortgage brokers can take care of strict ‘know your client’ compliance regulations without needing to meet the borrower in person.
Beyond this, we also have a strong customer support team that is accessible 24/7 via email, phone and online Chat. This support teams’ performance is reviewed on a weekly basis.
In addition, consumers can ask any home loan related question through HashChing platform and only verified financial experts from their area will respond to the questions, allowing people to make smart and informed financial decisions.
I see technological integration as an increasingly prominent trend for small businesses, particularly in regard to machine learning. Customers are looking for a tailored experience in almost all their services and machine learning will allow a business to cater for that demand more affordably than ever before.
Companies want to make better use of the data that they’ve collected, and machine learning technology is quickly becoming the most effective way to do that. A business can now use its data to automate things like answering customer service queries instantly and classifying tickets or messages to quickly route them to the right team, freeing up a support agents time for dealing with issues which require human engagement.
A small business can also radically reduce average handling time and automate repetitive questions to reach the ultimate goal of improving employee and customer satisfaction. This is just some of the things that machine learning opens up to small businesses, and the reality is we are just scratching the surface of what is possible.
In fact, at HashChing our biggest project underway at the moment is an automated banking statements feature. We’re capable of connecting lenders directly to borrowers through the platform, but the loan approval process is often tedious, so we see the logical next step for us is to manage the complete process through the platform and reduce the time and effort of these checks.
We are also developing more tools and features for our partner brokers for easy population of data, so they can focus on having a meaningful conversation with customers.
