Would the mortgage process benefit from greater adviser involvement?

One of the issues lenders appear to be grappling with at present is whether there are other significant process tasks where advisers might be provided with greater control over, how this might work in practice, and whether clients might gain significant benefit from this happening.

In that sense, it was interesting to read some of the reaction recently to Pepper Money’s decision to allow advisers to instruct valuations before documents have been approved, and I know other lenders have similar processes in place, designed to speed up the application process.

Advisers seemed to broadly welcome this, with the added caveat that some clients simply wouldn’t pay for the valuation at this stage, given that the mortgage won’t have been approved at that stage.

Others appeared to suggest that there may be other areas of the process which would benefit from greater adviser involvement, and which might help cases move much more quickly. One being around the credit checking of clients and whether there was an opportunity for lenders and advisers to somehow share the responsibilities in this area, again with the underlying caveat being around the importance of ensuring fraudulent activity doesn’t increase as a result.

From my perspective, I think we are some way from lenders being entirely comfortable with such an arrangement, and I also think advisers too might be somewhat nervous about potentially being ‘on the line’ for credit checking.

That said, there is no doubting that we have many areas of the process which are duplicated by all stakeholders, whether they are agents, advisers, lenders, solicitors, etc, and I know that there is a big push – particularly from the conveyancing community – for there to be movement towards a process which doesn’t involve multiple, repeated checks taking place, when there is a possibility of one source of truth.

It’s highly likely that lenders, for example, are always going to want to check an applicant’s credit details, but in other areas, for example, ID verification, there is much to be said for an electronic system where everyone relies upon one system, rather than having to repeatedly check the same ID time and time again.

While we wait for greater efficiency in those areas, advisers do have opportunities to push cases through their own systems by ensuring they have transparent client information from the ‘get go’.

In terms of client interactions, I wonder if there is anything more frustrating than finding out potential flies in the financial ointment some way down the mortgage process line, when your client has either forgotten their existing situation or quite simply didn’t know the true picture. While we can perhaps all give clients the benefit of the doubt in such situation it surely doesn’t help the adviser to be progressing a case based on false information?

It’s for these reasons, and many more, that having full control of the client’s credit report and banking information from the outset, means the likelihood of a case stalling on the adviser’s watch are greatly reduced.

When I speak to our Credit Assess users, they tell me that having access to this information and being able to work with the data provided, means they immediately have a slicker, quicker and more accurate process, cutting down on the time it takes to find product solutions, ensuring they are not going down the wrong path with their lender/mortgage recommendations, and (rather importantly) also guarding against potential fraud especially when it comes to the increased use of fraudulent payslips, and the like.

That’s the kind of all-round control we should be looking to instil in as many mortgage cases as possible and while, as time passes, advisers may be provided with the opportunity to look after more of the constituent parts of a case, starting on the right foot with a client in this way, is about as good as it gets.