In its manifesto, which Virgin has posted to more than 17,000 brokers, it has pledged to issue a mortgage offer within 10 working days of receiving a full application or it would pay the consumer £100.
Virgin Money mortgages director Peter Rogerson (pictured) acknowledged that its service standards had fallen down in the past.
“Two years ago we were struggling with our service which meant it was taking us, in some cases, 30 days to issue an offer,” he said.
“Since then we’ve been investing in our processes to allow us to turn around cases quickly. We don’t intend to be making payments because we can’t meet this promise, we’re able to cope with this speed of turnaround.”
Rogerson said the manifesto laid out ‘enormous’ commitments to the intermediary market and it demonstrated that it was serious about being a strong intermediary lender and ideally, the intermediary’s lender of choice.
He said: “We recognise that there are some bigger brands out there than us but one day, we want to be as big as they are and this shows a real commitment to the intermediary channel.”
The five-point service promise follows the news that Virgin raised its procuration fee to 50 basis points.
“This is one of the five pledges that made its way into the trade press because we told our brokers ahead of telling them about the rest of the service commitments. It costs more to do business post-MMR [Mortgage Market Review] and this is about giving brokers a fair day’s pay.”
Virgin has also pledged not to offer cheaper mortgage products to borrowers who approach them directly and has put together a team of 100 frontline staff including BDMs to suport intermediaries. Each of its brokers will also be given the name of their own BDM.
“The broker market introduces 90% of our mortgage business,” said Rogerson. “We are probably the most intermediary focused of the top 10 lenders because of that percentage of our business reliant on brokers. If brokers do well, we do well. We would never do anything to embarrass our brokers by offering cheaper products directly.”
Earlier today, Virgin Money cut rates by up to 0.80% across its mortgage range.
