Q. In today’s mortgage market, it can be difficult to get cases through to offer quickly. What are your top tips to help support a faster turnaround of applications?
A. The industry’s focus on quality lending and the fact that we no longer operate in a market driven just by volume has resulted in the need for a much closer working relationship between lenders and intermediaries to ensure that the right cases are placed successfully and quickly. Service has assumed an increasingly important role in the market since the onset of the financial crisis, with lenders seeking to differentiate their offering and the average turnaround time of cases often varying significantly from lender to lender.
Packaging remains key to a successful case outcome and it’s important to ensure the case fits the lender’s criteria, the application form is completed in full, and the right documentation is used to evidence income.
Some of the most common case omissions we see include failing to provide the full details required of any resident over 17 years old who isn’t an applicant – we ask for their full name(s); relationship to applicant(s); whether they’re financially dependent on applicant(s); and, if they are providing (or have provided) any money towards the transaction.
Another area that can cause delays is that of a gifted deposit – we need to know the full name(s) of person providing the gift and their relationship to the applicant(s); the amount of the gift; whether the person(s) providing the gift will be retaining any legal interest; and, if there are any circumstances where the gift will be repayable. Getting details such as this right first time will help a case be processed more quickly, resulting in a faster decision for the intermediary and their client.
From a lender’s perspective, we share this goal and our team of field and telephony based BDMs are there to help intermediaries with any queries they may have before submitting a case. Their knowledge of our lending criteria and packaging requirements may well be the difference between a client’s case going straight to offer or instead becoming a pend. Lenders also offer a number of other tools to support intermediaries. Our website, for instance, provides useful guides on areas such as underwriting and packaging, while our online service page offers daily updates on key metrics such as average time to offer.
At Abbey for Intermediaries, we’ve worked hard over the past two years to improve the service we offer our intermediary partners and despite seeing an increase of approximately 80% in business over the past six weeks, we’ve continued to support intermediaries with an average time to offer of just nine days.
As the market starts to look ahead to the opportunities and challenges presented by 2013, we’ll continue to work closely with intermediaries to offer them the information and tools they need to get the right decision for their client.
