Speaking at a Pepper Money roundtable on the release of its Adverse Credit Study, Rachel Geddes, mortgage adviser at Mortgage Advice Bureau, added: “If you look at the last 15 years adverse was the norm business and was a very lucrative business for the broker sector. And then it got the title of being specialist because of the market crash.
“Then we became wary of: ‘do we do that?’ ‘is that our sector? Are we knowledgeable enough to go down that?’
“And brokers have to make a decision of whether they going to be responsible for the knowledge. If not, who do they have as a contact to pass clients to? Because that client still needs assistance.”
Adam Hinder, the managing director of Simply Adverse, said it was “astonishing” that just 40 per cent of respondents looking for a mortgage said they would seek the advice of a broker.
Hinder added: “It’s a real problem because if brokers don’t know and they’re not in the specialist marketplace, it’s easy to keep their own pride and say ‘we can’t help you because of your credit profile’, when they should be saying ‘I don’t know how to help you either, let me find out or let me find someone who can’.
Help from lenders
Geddes went on to say when it came to helping borrowers with adverse credit, lenders also needed to do more to be consistent with their processes.
She said she found that at times, underwriters of lenders who advertised that they helped such clients would “scrutinise” and “change their parameters” when it was time to formalise and finalise the case, either changing the product or reducing the lending amount.
She said: “If lenders are going to be in this sector and advertise that they’re offering this kind of lending to clients then they have to appreciate these clients are vulnerable.”
