The network emailed and sent letters to mortgage brokers at the end of May to tell them about the upcoming changes to their professional indemnity insurance (PII) cover that would take place from October, when a new PII charging period begins.
The email from chief executive Mark Scanlon, seen by Mortgage Solutions, read: “[…]the PII policy terms will be varied to carry an exclusion for any advice event where all the elements of the advice journeys are not properly recorded on iO [Intelligent Office]. Therefore, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our members who’ve embraced the iO advice journey in its entirety.”
Scanlon said, despite a “testing insurance market” Tenet had been able to freeze PII premiums for its brokers for six consecutive years, except for the defined benefit surcharge premium.
The network said this was possible partly because its insurers welcomed Tenet’s move to a single CRM system, Intelligent Office (IO), that must be used by all members. By using one “core system”, said Scanlon, it allowed for “greater consistency for recording adviser activity, regulatory oversight and ultimately customer outcomes”.
The IO system went live in September 2019. Before this, brokers were allowed to use their own CRM systems, which many saw as a selling point of the network.
Tenet signed up to a five-year contract with Intelliflo’ Intelligent Office in February 2019 but brokers say it was not until May that year they were told the use of IO was compulsory. The CRM system went live on 25 September, which brokers say gave them four months to train and move over to the new software. Since then brokers have complained about the length of time it takes to process a mortgage application.
Tenet has made online and in person training sessions available for brokers and issued member updates when glitches were fixed or updates had made to the CRM system.
Writing to brokers, Scanlon said the network has “worked tirelessly to embed a new way of working”.
Scanlon added: “Renewal discussions with insurers will start in June and our preliminary data gathering has indicated that in some instances, members have not fully adopted the best practice iO advice journey.
“There are a number of reasons that have been identified, most of which can be addressed with further training and guidance. Clearly, we want to avoid the situation where a case is not covered by PII because the full advice journey was not followed in iO.”
All Tenet broker members will receive individual feedback on how successful they have been at using the IO and if needed, will be given guidance on how they can improve to satisfy Tenet’s compliance requirements.
Tenet declined to comment.
