When the majority of niche and specialist lenders dropped out of the market there was no longer a need for the services of a packager as mainstream ‘vanilla’ mortgage products available could all be sourced from sourcing systems.
As the markets have come back however, we have more new lenders looking to carve a niche and with them has come increasing product innovation. Rising consumer demand and each borrower with different and diverse needs means the broker doesn’t know what type of client is going to come through his or her door next.
As the borrowers’ needs become more diverse many brokers may find that they are faced with finding a suitable mortgage of a type that they may only come across once a month. They are then faced with the challenge of multiple buy-to-lets, HMOs or arranging an expat mortgage. They still need to put the client with the right lender so that is when mortgage desks come into their own.
It is the job of a packager’s mortgage desk to know the specialist lenders well and to have a thorough understanding of their criteria. In this way they act as a middle man helping brokers in their research to find the best lender for their client but also assisting the specialist lender filter out the cases that don’t fit their criteria.
Many specialist lenders don’t have the infrastructure to take a lot of calls from people who don’t understand their criteria, so packagers take on that role.
The new breed of packager therefore sits perfectly between the two: the brokers need them to understand the complexities of the lender’s criteria, and lenders will know that the only cases they receive from a packager will be ones that fit their criteria and which contain the right information already.
David Copland is director of mortgage services at LSL
