Ben Thompson, director of mortgages at Legal & General, said the mortgage market would come back and intermediary business continues to bring in between 50 to 90% of lending for the top ten UK providers.
However, panelists also advised intermediaries to place less emphasis on proc fees and more on building revenue around the consumer relationship.
Thompson said: “We’re at an important crossroads, where we are facing funding pressure and budget cuts and other anomalies and wondering whether more cuts are on the way. Despite this, lenders have been making other adjustments to support the intermediary market.”
Panelists during a similar session at yesterday’s event in Coventry, were clearer that proc fees were here to stay.
Ian Andrew, head of intermediary sales at the Nationwide for Intermediaries and The Mortgage Works and Alan Cleary, managing director of Exact Mortgage Experts, both agreed that the lower proc fee trend from a few lenders was “tidying up” the process, but not the beginning of a downward fee trend.
