Edward Payne, director at Clifton Mortgages, said: “I use packagers, I think everybody should use packager. Normally, I tend to do it if there’s an element of adverse; I don’t tend to get involved with those customers in my client base, but I don’t turn the customer away.
“But this is the age of holistic advice. I’m not saying, you know, we should all be going out and doing investment advice and all types of financial services, but when a customer comes to see us and there is clearly a need to talk to them about their will, you need to have a will specialist in place,” he said.
Payne said that, from a later life lending perspective, he was qualified to advise on lifetime mortgages, but a lot of advisers may not be, so “they need to have a trusted partner within that space”.
“It’s such a diverse demographic, you’ve got to have all of the tools available to you, and definitely working with a good packager in areas that you are regularly working is key from my perspective,” he added.
Michael Craig, managing director at Brilliant Solutions, said: “If you can’t refer that customer to a later life expert, or have that conversation, that customer will find someone that can. Then what you’ve run the risk of is allowing that customer to leave the presence of your business, they go talk to a competitor that you’ve not vetted, and they will cross-sell into that customer.
“All of a sudden, you might lose that customer because you couldn’t help their later life lending needs; even though you’ve helped them get to that part of their life, a customer will go with whomever can help him or her support that side of it.”
He called for more education from packagers, mortgage clubs and lenders, whether that is in the form of roadshows, case studies or testimonials.
Face-to-face conversations with BDMs vital
Darren Deacon, head of intermediary sales at Family Building Society, said that he would encourage every broker and adviser to “open the door to their business development manager [BDM]”, adding that it was a “use them or lose them” situation.
“There’s far more that you get out of a conversation when you’re having a face-to-face conversation. You can get to know one another and you can start having those conversations, we… will be able to talk about situations that are not there in lending policy.
“Lending policy is what it is, but we deal a lot in the grey, in that we can move criteria where the need sits,” he added.
Deacon said that a good BDM is “so valuable in being able to put a case together”, especially in the later life lending market.
He said that the later life lending market may not be an area that brokers were “dealing with on a daily, weekly or monthly basis”, so they were “going to need a bit of a steer”.
Deacon said that packers were “crucial” as they had “extra reach, they can reach additional firms”.
“I think a lot of the problem with some advisers is they’ll say, well, if I’ve got to go to a packager, my customer may think I don’t know what I’m doing. Well I would turn it on its head and say, no, you don’t know what you’re doing, you can reach out to that packager, who deals with us on a daily basis,” he noted.
Watch this 17:20 video talking about the later life lending sector and regulation with Family Building Society. Hosted by Mortgage Solutions’ deputy editor Anna Sagar, with speakers including Darren Deacon, head of intermediary sales at Family Building Society, Edward Payne, director of Clifton Mortgages, and Michael Craig, managing director at Brilliant Solutions.
This is the last in a series. Watch the previous videos below:
Later life lending market has ‘plenty of opportunity’ – Family BS
Regulator and lender innovation needed around lending into retirement – Family BS
‘Madness’ to not consider income for lifetime mortgage – Family BS
