Legal & General Mortgage Club’s annual awards saw the Halifax scoop the best overall lender title for the second year in a row. The awards, run in association with Mortgage Solutions, also saw BM Solutions named most improved lender, while the Woolwich took home the title for best products for the third year.
Commenting, Steve Sandiford, head of borrowing products at BM Solutions, said: ‘We moved into specialist lending a couple of years ago, worked out our strategy and set out our stall. It would be presumptuous to think that we would become number one overnight. We have now established ourselves and moved from being a new entrant specialist lender to establishing ourselves as number one.’
Other lenders to come out on top were Alliance & Leicester for e-commerce, and Northern Rock for sales and marketing. Halifax took the award for best service, and Bank of Ireland was voted best specialist lender.
Discussing the Halifax’s second award, Paul Fincham, spokesman for the Halifax, said: ‘Feedback from mortgage intermediaries shows good service is the combination of many factors, not just one. For example, in the independent Mortgage Achilles 2002 survey, intermediaries rated good product range, competitive rates and good telephone service, as either extremely or very important. Halifax Intermediaries has worked hard to ensure it can deliver on all counts. In particular, offering good product range, reliable decision in principles, regular updates on new products and a dedicated team for intermediary business.’
The awards are the result of L&G’s mortgage intermediary members voting against a series of criteria including products, service, sales and marketing as well as e-commerce capability in today’s marketplace.
In addition to the awards for lenders, awards were presented to members of the Legal & General Mortgage Club to recognise their performance in the mortgage market today. The winners were: Mortgage Advice Bureau as top business partner for the third year running, Onn Financial Partnership as fastest growing business partner for 500 plus cases in 2002 and MoneyQuest as the same for more than 100 cases in 2002. Fastest growing IFA was John Hugh Independent FS and London & Country Mortgages was named top IFA.
l The awards supplement will be published with the 16 June issue of Mortgage Solutions.
