Mortgage Introducer was contacted by Peter Wright, financial consultant at CBK, after the lender offered deals which were unavailable to intermediaries, leaving him unable to present the best product to his client.
However, after contacting his intermediary sales manager, he was told this was part of a change of focus from the lender.
The e-mail said: “Unfortunately at the moment there are a couple of products that the branches have that you as a broker do not have assess to. This has been done recently as a means of attracting more branch-based business (it’s apparently cheaper for the group to have direct business). This is not something that the intermediary division was comfortable with as we had been proud of the fact for a long time there were no branch exclusives, in fact as a broker you would normally have had more exclusives open to you via different mortgage clubs.”
Wright admitted his frustration at the situation and questioned whether, at a time when the government was trying to encourage the public to seek independent advice, it was wise to place branches before brokers.
A spokesperson for Woolwich said: “This is not a change of long-term strategy but we have received increased business volumes through the intermediary channel in the last two months and we are trying to manage that flow of business. We are ahead of our lending target this year so we want to manage the flow better and meet our service expectations.”
Adviser anger at the ‘branches versus brokers’ debate has intensified in recent weeks as lenders have tried to adapt to the current lending market.
Robert Barwell of Newholme Ltd, summed up mortgage intermediary sentiment: “I have found an increasing disparity of lending criteria from direct-to-customer deals with those through intermediaries from most high street names. I recently received an e-mail from a lender stating that ‘due to market conditions’ it would be withdrawing products available at 97 per cent. But lo and behold, 97 per cent is available through the lender’s branch network.”
