Acknowledging your errors, builds trusting relationships with clients
All of us make mistakes. Put simply, there are two types of people, those who admit they have made errors in their life… and those who aren’t honest. Of course, in the world of mortgages, making a mistake that can potentially involve large sums of money, carries with it some extra pressure, but however big or small your mishap is, it is how you cope with it afterwards and learn from it that can define you professionally.
Declan Ward (pictured left), managing director of The Finance Ward - which raises finance for investors for commercial and HMO conversions - is refreshingly candid about an error he made when he first got into the industry. It’s one that cost him dearly. A client was finishing a semi-commercial to residential conversion and Ward was arranging a remortgage of the block of flats, “It was all my fault,” Ward shared. “I checked the EPC register for flat sizes, but only looked at the old units. But the new ones? Two were under 30 sqm, something I didn’t pick up, and it would’ve been fine, if I’d picked the right lender. But I advised one who’s minimum criteria was 30 sqm - big mistake.”
Ward’s client had paid £3,000 for a valuation, just to find out it wasn’t going to work. “It could have been avoided,” he said. “I had two choices - let the client take the hit or own it and put things right.” This was before Ward had his own business, and was therefore less solvent. “I was broker than broke at the time,” he recalled. “But I paid the client £3k out of my own pocket - it really set me back, but it was the right thing to do.”
Interestingly, specialist mortgage adviser Amar Dhanota (pictured second from left) had a very similar case. Dhanota, co-founder of London-FS, had a long-standing, large portfolio landlord looking to refinance three multi-unit freehold blocks at the same time. All the due diligence had been done, but she assumed the individual units were all over 30 sqm – and, in fact, there were a few slightly under. “The client’s happy with the products, and gives me the go ahead, and when I go to get the AIP (agreement in principle) done, it declines,” Dhanota recounted. "The next best rate is 1.5%, and 1% more in lender fees. I was fortunate enough to have a great relationship with the lender, and was able to get the cases agreed by exception. I could have, at that point, not said anything to the client, but for me it was important to let him know I had missed something, but I was also able to find a solution. He thanked me for my transparency. Luckily for me, my mistakes have been prior to an application going to a lender and any fees being paid – so initial approval stage.”
Now, Dhanota keeps a word document, containing a checklist, to which she adds details as needed, for cross reference purposes. “I feel that we, as brokers, have so many variables to look at when advising clients,” she reflected. “It can be almost impossible to get every single thing right all of the time, we are human after all.”
How then does Dhanota think that mortgage brokers should address mistakes? “When it does happen, it’s so important to own it, rather than push the blame to someone else - which I am assuming would be the lender or underwriter, like they don’t get enough stick as it is,” she said. “This shows integrity, trust and builds stronger relationships, as clients may forget we can make mistakes, but when we do, we admit it and then find a way to fix it.”
Dhanota has had clients come to her to say that the previous broker they were using had told them a lender had declined the case, for whatever reason, where in fact the lender wouldn’t have taken the case in the first place. “If the broker had just said sorry it was my mistake, and found a solution, the client wouldn’t have needed to look elsewhere for advice,” she noted.
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Making a mistake when rates are changing rapidly
Broker Emily Franks (pictured second from right), at Emily’s Mortgage Services, is honest about the mishap she made at the peak of rapid product revisions in the fallout of the Truss market-changing mini-budget. “In the height of rate changes left, right and centre in 2023, I accidently changed a rate for a client thinking I was getting a better deal for them but actually didn’t see the fee which made it slightly more expensive,” she said. “I contacted the lender who actually refused to budge. So, the brokerage I was with at the time, we sat and worked out what the loss was to the client and we reimbursed them for that, which was the best outcome all round. But it still bothers me that the lender wouldn’t go back to their original offer because of a mistake I made, not the client.” She added: “I would love to be considered perfect, but alas, I am not. Brokers are human and making mistakes is going to happen. It’s how you handle it that counts. Mistakes teach us to do better and to be better. This one, in particular, taught me more haste, less speed.”
Meanwhile, Michelle Lawson (pictured right), director of Lawson Financial, admits that she’s had to put her hands up a few times in her career to admit to errors, but anything she has done wrongly has - thankfully - been minor. “I have been lucky enough to be assisted by lenders in getting me out of a few holes after pleading and appealing to their better nature,” she said. “We are all human, but the most important thing is honesty and owning it unless it really is something that can go under the radar, and no harm done as nobody will be any the wiser.”
