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Tough lending criteria, rising borrowing rates, falling house prices and a reduction in mortgage products available are just a flavour of some of the major challenges facing mortgage advisers today.

Despite all of this doom and gloom, there is a small chink of light at the end of the tunnel as mortgage advisers can choose a number of different technological deployments to support their business needs.

Getting this right can make a real difference and help create a healthy advisory environment. Proper choice and application of technology can improve efficiency and enhance business processes.

Many firms and advisers have already put technology to work within their daily business management and advice routines. Within the technology offerings sits the portal.

In an industry riddled with technical terms and acronyms it is worthwhile establishing what exactly we mean by a portal.

In a nutshell, it is a one-stop shop that provides online quote and buy facilities in respect of a range of life insurance products for advisers.

The core benefit of a portal is access to a universe of company products in one location without advisers having to trawl the market for quotations for their clients. The established portal providers in the market today are Assureweb, The Exchange and Webline.

Portals offer access to wider sales opportunities through products such as income protection, mortgage protection and critical illness. With fewer mortgage products available and thus reduced procuration fees, the range of life products available offer advisers an alternative revenue stream while acting in their customers best interest to make sure they have the correct level of protection.

A further advantage portals offer is they automatically re-use data from the client quotation and put it into the application form, thus reducing the re-keying time and error rates for advisers or administrators.

Quotation, application and product literature is also available in a format that allows advisers to store these items within their own systems, thus reducing the need for paper storage and allowing an online compliance trail.

Information can also be stored on the portal service allowing retrieval and review of previous quotations. By linking into provider online underwriting services, portals offer advisers faster decisions on client applications and allow quicker acceptance decisions on behalf of their clients.

On the subject of online applications, when advisers link to an online application such as online underwriting, it is necessary to register with the product provider online service.

This means a single adviser or administrator could end up having to manage a number of different accounts and passwords. There is a solution. It comes in the form of a single digital certificate. Once advisers have registered the certificate with the chosen internet services multiple account details are no longer necessary.

Mortgage advisers could be forgiven for thinking, this all sounds good in theory but how will it work in practice? Will portals offer a good strategic fit with my existing systems?

Many mortgage sourcing, customer relationship management and research systems allow advisers to link through to some portal services from within their software. By speaking to system providers, advisers can see what links are available and the level of functionality offered.

The level of functionality can range from basic links that open up the portal service from within the existing system through to deeper embedded links within the main system processes.

For example, Assureweb has already worked with a number of system providers to deploy quotation and application facilities that fit snugly within the system provider process. These facilities reflect the look and feel or brand of that host service. This provides advisers with the additional benefit of seamless client management processes and a simplified process.

The portal universe is constantly evolving. There are a number of service enhancements that are currently being developed. Examples include tracking services that offer advisers the ability to track client applications from the outset through to the policy being underwritten.

Some portals offer the ability for advisers to create their own branded website and to select specific services or product providers as they require.

With the growing demand for multi-benefit products, there is an increasing requirement for portals to incorporate these into their comparison services. This will ultimately improve an adviser's ability to compare products that incorporate a number of benefits under one policy with those that include a limited range of benefits.

Similarly, work is already underway for portals to automatically accept data from customer relationship management or point of sale systems and populate the portal services or applications. This will further reduce the time and effort advisers require to input data.

In the future, the next phase of development will be for portals to increase the ability to push application data back to the customer relationship management or point of sale system. This will allow more flexibility in how the system provider stores and handles that data. The good news for advisers is they will be able to reap the benefits.

By investing in technology advisers can be rewarded with improved efficiencies tailored to suit their business needs and budget. In the current credit gloom, portals can help advisers by offering access to wider sales opportunities and can help simplify their business process overall.

In addition to the internal efficiencies and benefits, there is potential for advisers to increase the service offering to their clients and develop long-term relationships that openly display adherence to treating customers fairly.

Mark Wilson is head of propositions for Assureweb

Five seconds: With portals advisers may be able to pick choose parts of business in order to grab the best business that they can and come out winners.