What lenders need to do better for brokers

As Valentine’s Day rapidly approaches, love is in the air… or so it seems. Is there plenty of affection from mortgage brokers for their lender partners, or is there more that can be done to enhance their relationship?

Forget the red roses, the heartfelt greeting cards, and the boxes of chocs, there are other ways to enhance the partnerships we enjoy, particularly between brokers and lenders. Mortgage Introducer loves playing Cupid… so we invited advisers to reveal what lenders could do to keep them sweet.

Amar Dhanota (pictured left), specialist mortgage adviser at London-FS, noted that the broker-lender relationship has become more remote since COVID – she wants more in-person interaction.

“I'm very much a face-to-face broker,” Dhanota said. “I like to see who I'm dealing with and I think it's important for the lenders and their account managers to see who they're dealing with. I do feel that we should have more face-to-face support.” Not meeting in person can impact brokers’ work, Dhanota suggested. “You don't have that relationship,” she said. “It needs to be more proactive. It makes it really difficult for cases that don't tick the box to actually get them through. It becomes quite difficult and it becomes quite tedious. I feel like we're kind of muddling along by ourselves, a lot of the time.”

For James Blackler (pictured second from left), a broker at Trinity Financial, the responsiveness of lenders’ business development managers is vital.

“I think we love it when the BDMs are accessible and when we can get through to them and they're responsive,” said Blackler. “When we've got a case that we want to run by them, we want to hear back from them on the same day, as opposed to trying to chase them up all the time. Some BDMs are incredible and they are really, really responsive. Whenever there's an issue or a problem, they come in incredibly useful in that respect.”

One of the main stumbling blocks in the lender-broker relationship following the mini-budget from former Prime Minister and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng in 2022 was the rapid fire changes to product rates, and the removal of some products altogether. There were complaints that lenders gave little warning of their decisions. For broker Amanda Law (pictured second from right) communication of changes remains important.

“With some of the lenders, it would be good if they gave more notice when rates were changing because they can change very, very quickly,” Law said. “I've seen them change halfway through a day - you've just said to the client, ‘right, I'll get this all in place for you today’, and then they change without any notice. But I think the lenders are getting better with that. Some of them are giving more notice now than they were giving before.”

Read more: 'Becoming a mortgage broker was an eye opener – it's not an easy job'

How key is a personal service from lenders?

A more bespoke, personal touch from lenders is something that mortgage & protection adviser Graham Lock (pictured right), from Lock and Key Mortgages, seeks too. He urges them to focus on the human element of an application.

“I think sometimes the mainstream lenders do take quite a computer-generated approach,” Lock said. “It is hard when they don't take a common sense approach to some cases. One that springs to mind would be a couple on a mortgage. He's the main earner, with a really great salary, but if he’s got a partner who doesn't work, or is on a relatively low income, they can hardly borrow anything. It will work if I just put him on the mortgage - if I put his wife on there, it won't. I think that's the frustration at the moment.”

Meanwhile, Ben Perks (picture inset right), managing director of Orchard Financial Adviser, believes that, on the whole, lenders are working hard and effectively, but he would like to see greater innovation from them, to make brokers’ jobs easier.

“Innovation in terms of products is something that I imagine probably every broker that you speak to is crying out for,” Perks said, “We've got the borrowers who want to borrow, we've got the advisers who want to advise and the more products and more options we've got, the better. So the biggest ask from our point of view would be innovation on products, so we can help more people - innovation of products is key.”

Specialist mortgage adviser, Sam Hutchins (pictured inset right), from Blueberry Specialist Lending, acknowledged that as much as brokers sometimes complain about lenders, it likely works both ways.

“I'm sure there's things they complain about with us too, that we don't perfectly package cases sometimes,” Hutchins reasoned. “I think the key to it is putting yourself in the other person's shoes and just being fair about things. The way I like to do it, if the lender is having an issue with something about a case that I've submitted, I try to put myself in their shoes and say, ‘OK, what are they seeing that I'm not seeing from my perspective?’ It's not easy to be understanding when you feel like someone is not being completely fair, but we should try to be as understanding as possible with lenders, I think.”