The Burn Your Mortgage Podcast: Overcome Mortgage Application Document Frustration with Sam Khajeei and David Ford

Full  Transcript

Sean Cooper

Welcome to the Burn Your Mortgage podcast. I'm Sean Cooper, and it's great to be back for another episode. On today's show, I'll be talking to Sam Khajeei, the president and co-founder of Fast Key Technology Limited, and David Ford, who's in charge of lender relations at Fast Key launch nationwide in April. Passkey technology allows lenders and mortgage brokers to easily access essential documents for mortgage or loan applications within minutes, including notices of assessment, income statement, income tax slips and candidate child benefit details.

It also has tools to help support borrowers, property managers and landlords. In my interview with Sam and Dave, we discussed what is fast key and what are its many benefits. How fast keys can be helpful for salary employees and how fast keys can be helpful for self-employed individuals. Without further ado, here's my interview with Sam and Dave. Hi, Sam.

Hi, Sam and David. How are you both doing today? It's a pleasure to have you on the Burn Your Mortgage podcast.

Sam Khajeei

Thanks so much for having us, Sean.

David Ford

Yeah. Appreciate it.

Sean Cooper

Yeah, I'm excited to speak with both of you today as well because yeah, I just started using Facebook myself and I had a great experience with it. It just makes the document process so much easier from a borrower perspective. So yeah, for the people who have used fast key, they seem to be big fans, but I'm sure many of the listeners haven't heard of Fast Key because unfortunately, you both don't have the budget of one of the big five banks to put billboards on the side of the highway and advertisements on TV and on the internet and all that.

So, Sam, why don't you get started and tell listeners about what Fast Key is and how you got started and the services that you offer?

Sam Khajeei

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Sean. So in a nutshell, Fast Key is a company that helps applicants to mortgages receive, you know, documents really quickly from the CRA in connection with their mortgage application. There are a number of other things that SAS key and SAS Wkyc.com offers, and that's just for clarity. It's the opposite of a slow key. So Fast Key does a number of different things as well.

In addition to helping a borrower and applicant get their mortgage documents in place, we also have contracts with the police departments across Canada. So that person could run a criminal record check remotely from their desktop computer at home for a relatively reasonable price of 2599 plus GST. So that gives an individual the opportunity to do a criminal record check without actually having to get up and go out of the house, stand in line at a police department.

We also have a credit report that's just a soft credit check done by Equifax, so that borrowers, applicants in connection with mortgages can take a quick look at their credit score and have a sense of the kind of borrowing that they'll be eligible for. So that's, you know, in a nutshell, what fast Wkyc.com does. Sean.

Sean Cooper

That's great. And David, did you want to add anything else yourself as well?

David Ford

Yeah. You know, our primary focus over the last few months has certainly been the mortgage application process. And so working with lenders, the lending community, the broker community that that has been I don't know, I guess we could call it a primary focus. Things like asset reports and income reports. Those are in the works where lenders would rely on our reports for down payment verification.

But like Sam mentioned, the CRA document retrieval, especially since CRA has changed the permissions for an individual. If they log into their account and try to pull the documents that a lender would need. Since that occurred last year. We've seen a massive uptake in the need and the use for fast you to gather these documents. So certainly that's our main product.

And I've been helping to alleviate that friction point.

Sean Cooper

Yes, that sounds great because yeah, documents are one of the necessary evils of getting out mortgages. And yeah, anything to make the process easier for the borrower on board with us as well. So yeah, that sounds great. So following up on that there, I guess I'll throw it back to you there. Sam. So can you talk about how passkey is helpful for borrowers?

There are a couple things I wanted to address. So there's two kinds of main borrowers here. There's the salaried employee as well as somebody who's self-employed. I'll toss the one for the question about self-employed to you, David, after this, but I'd be curious to hear from you first. Sam, if you could talk about how a fast key would be helpful for somebody who is a salaried employee, like, I'm not sure where you are with the down payment documents and the assets and all that.

If that's available today, that's not available today, then that's fine. But just talking about stuff like the T4 slips, the tax slips, like with mortgage lenders, they need to verify, like most of the time it's T4 slips if you're doing a two year average. But sometimes you can use other income like investment income, stuff like that there.

And yeah, just with CRA kind of makes the documents more secure by when you download it not showing the borrower's name or social insurance number. It can be frustrating to get those documents there. So yeah. So you could talk about how a fast key helps facilitate that and makes it easier for somebody so that they're not digging through their filing cabinet or having to go back to a former employer to get the T4 slip, then that would be great.

Sam Khajeei

Sure, absolutely. And so the nice thing about this is I can actually speak to it from my own perspective as a mortgage applicant working with a broker in the past. So I was at one point a salaried employee and in that time frame I had actually applied for a mortgage. You know, I was banking with one of the big six banks at the time, but I wanted to work outside to apply for, you know, a brokerage mortgage that wasn't available through my bank.

And the initial experience was great, except for the fact that the amount of documents requested of me, we're really, really cumbersome to obtain. So unfortunately, you know, I should be better, but I didn't necessarily have the documents ready to go, and I didn't really know what those documents referred to. So my broker asked me for two years of notices of assessments, statements of Account Canada, child benefit information, CCB information, and proof of income.

And like you said on all my slips, I am not a good record keeper. And so I didn't actually have this stuff and I had no idea how to get it. So here I am in the morning calling cra, you know, being put on hold for a long amount of time, not really being able to obtain the information.

And ultimately that process frustrated me. And I actually ended up going away and to my bank and sadly, I actually got a worse rate. And it was all because I really got frustrated by the process. So Starsky tries to alleviate all of that by registering with our platform and simply just signing on as an applicant through the instructions that your broker will send to you.

You can quickly authorize Barsky as your level one authorized representative. And at that point, we extract all the information that your broker is looking for and send it directly to your broker so that you don't even have to be involved anymore. So really, from an applicant standpoint, it's encouraging statement from you to your broker that ideally we should be using fast wkyc.com so that you don't have that level of frustration that I experience, and chasing down all these documents and then sending sensitive documents like this by your email and all the other issues that come from it.

Like you said, not even having my name on the documents that I download myself.

Sean Cooper

Thank you for sharing that story there, Sam. And it's a powerful story. And yeah, just speaking from personal experience, getting these tax documents can be frustrating and getting the right tax documents is even more frustrating. Like, I can only imagine being a borrower and sending in these documents and then thinking I'm downloading the right documents and then being told.

Unfortunately, I can't use these documents because it's missing your name or social insurance number. So yeah, I can speak from firsthand, like working with some borrowers here. They were having a pretty frustrating time with the CRA website, but as soon as they used passkey, they were not the most tech savvy. But they found it super easy to use and we were able to get the documents within only a couple of hours there, so they were very impressed with the service.

I was very impressed with their service there. So yeah, definitely don't let documents be a deterrent there. It's great that there's a service like key out there that makes the process of getting documents that much easier than ever to switch mortgage lenders, and you're not running into a problem with the documents there. So thanks again, Sam. So switching gears, I'll pass it over to you, David.

So if you could talk about pass keys from a self-employed individual's perspective. So yeah, being self-employed, the documents can be even more than like a salary employee because you have to provide tax returns for the last two years. Notice of assessment and list goes on and on. If you're buying a property, you have to provide down payment documents and such.

So yeah, maybe you can talk about how a pass key helps somebody that is self-employed. The sad reality is some self-employed individuals, like they probably just decide to renew with their existing lender because they just remember the first time, like how the process of getting the document was. And they're just like, I don't want to go through that again.

So yeah, if you could talk about how a fast key makes that a lot easier for them so that it's a lot more turnkey and simple, that would be great. And then I'm sure more people will want to switch lenders who are self-employed. 

David Ford

Yeah. Well, I think, you know, just to reiterate, even the process, whether you're self-employed or an employee, our default setting for orders from a mortgage broker is to obtain the last two years history and all available tax documents. So whether you are an employee and you obtain a T4 and T4 only, or you are a self-employed applicant that, you know, maybe they pay themself a dividend at the end of the year, but also T4.

You know, the process for a self-employed applicant is just one task, and the process for an employee is just one task. And I think that's why we're seeing such a big uptick in usage is because for a self-employed applicant that you're absolutely right. Maybe they do have that T5 slip for a dividend. Plus they pay themself a T4 and maybe they have investment income.

Or there's many sources of income that could make up that total that you, a mortgage broker, needs to use on a two year average. It's all available. Tax lapse is kind of a key one that we've seen because we've seen one, I think it was for two years. It was 17 pages long. And that was an employee who was a teacher, and she worked for, you know, one regular school district during the year, hot summer school.

But there was also a change of jobs there. And she also had investment income. So for her alone, you know, you would think, oh, this is a standard file, right? But she wouldn't know. You'd ask her for her T4 and you'd get it and it wouldn't add up to the total income. So I think, you know, whether you're self-employed or, you know, employed, but also have different sources, I think it's really important to use a fast key because you have the names on them.

You have all available tax slips, all income sources. And then you also get the notice of assessment that does that total. And proves there's no taxes on it. So you know we know on the broker side that's an important component. But the applicant doesn't know that. And you know we can do our best to educate them as much as we can that we need absolutely everything.

But then you're right, like, Sean, if you're that applicant going through multiple tax years and multiple different document types and navigating through CRA online like that is a friction point. So we've been able to just completely bypass that for the applicant's experience. And then the broker and the applicant, they get all the documents and they're available in their portal that's stored securely on Canadian servers.

Sean Cooper

Well, you've sold me, David. I mean, I've used to ask you myself, and it was a great experience. And my borrowers are very happy with it as well. So the bottom line is definitely don't just renew with your existing bank or lender because you're worried about providing documents or mortgage renewal purposes. Yeah, definitely. There's a great service out there called passkey, which helps make the process of providing documents super simple.

So yeah, definitely don't just renew and leave a lot of money on the table. It's important to do due diligence by working with a mortgage broker. And yeah, a great service like Barsky can help make the process that much simpler for you when switching mortgage lenders. So yeah, it's been great chatting with you. Is there anything else that either of you wanted to mention about Barsky before we wrapped up the podcast?

Sam Khajeei

I think, Sean, from my perspective, it's just that we're trying to build the profile and as we gain traction in this market, you know you're going to see Barsky become more and more of a staple in the lender's process. And as that happens, that means that more and more brokers will use us and therefore it will become a much more expedited approach to doing all this.

And so the more familiarity we have and growth we have, the better, obviously. So it just goes back to what I said earlier. If an applicant is doing a mortgage with one of their brokers and the broker is going through the email process, you know, the applicant can very simply say, hey, like, have you heard us ask, why don't we use this instead of having me, you know, search for the documents, stand on this.

I have to figure out what the right documents are, etc., etc. go back and forth with you and it'd be way faster for us to do it with. So it'd be helpful to have an encouraging statement given to your broker from the applicant.

Sean Cooper

And as far as keynotes, low key. Right, exactly. Yeah.

Sam Khajeei

That's the key, not the slow key.

Sean Cooper

And Dave, is there anything else that you wanted to mention? Maybe you can talk about how the name Fast Key came to be or anything else helpful.

David Ford

Yeah. Well really this was to expedite the process of document fulfillment. And so whether it's a tenant screening or you're working in the mergers and acquisitions space with employee onboarding or mortgage lending, fast key want it to be that secure portal like Sam mentioned, I don't think it will be too far down the road where lenders will say, you know, this is our preferred method, right?

I think that the amount of fraud that's been on the rise, document fraud, down payment fraud for bank history, things like that, like, you know, fast key is at the front runner and now really starting to become top of mind. Certainly in the lender community. But we don't just serve mortgage brokers on that side. If you're a property manager, Sean, I'm sure you have lots of clients who manage multiple properties like this is a great screening process because we can provide that income verification.

The criminal record check Equifax reports so fast the key is in a few other verticals. And we're really excited to certainly continue to expand our reach in the mortgage broker channel and that applicant channel. But yeah, we're around for a number of different uses and purposes.

Sean Cooper

And we'll thank you both for your time. I'll be sure to include a link to Fast Key in the show notes, so my loyal listeners can learn more about Barsky. So yeah, again, thank you both for your time. And it was a pleasure having you both Sam and David, on the podcast today.

Sam Khajeei

Thanks, Sean.

David Ford

Thanks, Sean. Really appreciate it.

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Sean Cooper  

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Burn Your Mortgage podcast. Besides being a podcast host, I’m also an independent mortgage broker. If you or anyone you know, family, friends, co workers or neighbors could ever use any unbiased mortgage advice or a second opinion, feel free to reach out. Email me at sean@burnyourmortgage.ca or call or text me at 647-867-3711 for a free mortgage consultation.

Also, be sure to head on over to www.burnyourmortgage.ca and sign up for my free weekly newsletter. As a small token of my appreciation, you’ll be able to download my ultimate mortgage checklist on choosing the perfect mortgage.