Speaking at the Mortgage Administrator Online Event (MAOE), Alex Hill, head of risk at Stonebridge, said mortgage administrators tend to be “more into the detail” and have the time to examine documents in detail, which is key in financial crime prevention, especially mortgage fraud.
To check for financial crime, he said checking financial status, remunerations, asking questions, using compliance teams and doing due diligence were key actions.
Regarding questions, he said that how long someone has been in the job, whether someone has a second job to boost income for affordability purposes, whether there was a significant rise in income, if bank accounts had little day-to-day activity, if they were self-employed but masquerading as a PAYE employee and if a joint applicant may need further confirmation of income from other sources were all good questions to ask.
He added that often customers will have been coerced into mortgage fraud, possibly by a friend or family member, but there were a lot of “useful tools” that could help ascertain if a case is genuine or not.
Google Street view, tax calculators, Companies House, payslips compared to bank statements, P60s and an internet presence of the company they work for could all help detect mortgage fraud.
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Hill continued: “Administrators must feel supported in the role that they’re performing, that is really key. Having a culture that means you’re not frightened to ask questions, that’s a good thing. It’s an encouraging thing to have a good administrator challenge an adviser in a healthy way.
“For instance, ‘can you explain this to me?’ ‘Can you provide some more detail around that?’”
He continued on to say that encouraging development of administrator skill sets and administrators having a “structured approach” were crucial.
“Don’t undermine the compliance process, don’t allow it to slip by the by when things get busy. It’s easy for an adviser to be keen to move onto the next case, for you as an adviser you need your role to be ring-fenced, you need a structure to it… to make sure that nothing gets missed,” Hill said.
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