The firm said that it had had feedback from brokers that some lenders were reintroducing dual pricing, over a decade after the practice fell by the wayside.
Dual pricing is where different prices are set in different markets for the same product or service. In the mortgage space this means the lenders offer consumers lower pricing directly, compared to the deals that can brokers can access from that lender.
Dual pricing can be especially contentious in the mortgage market space as many customers are introduced to lenders through brokers, so some see it as cutting the broker out of future transactions.
The broker firm said that the practice “fell out of favour” over a decade ago when lenders acknowledged that they “needed to work with and not against brokers”, especially given that most mortgage holders are introduced via brokers.
Just Mortgages said that introduced business was beneficial for lenders as its cases were professionally packaged and led to improved communication on service levels and launching and pulling of products to consumers.
John Philips (pictured), national operations director at Just Mortgages, said: “This really does feel like a return of the bad old days when there was conflict rather than cooperation between lenders and brokers.
“Over the past decade brokers and lenders have worked so incredibly hard to develop terrific partnerships and mutually beneficial relationships and to throw that away to avoid paying a fee for professionally introduced business seems very short-sighted. The majority of mortgages in the UK are arranged via brokers and I suspect that any lender introducing dual pricing will suffer something of a backlash.”
He continued: “Perhaps these rumours are just rumours but if they are not then I’m struggling to understand why a lender would want to be known as ‘anti-broker’ as that is exactly what will happen if they go down a dual pricing route.”
