As a member of the Verifi team I would like to echo the comments of Mark Loosmore. With few exceptions mortgage advisers wish to provide clients with a first rate professional service. The current regulatory emphasis on TCF (Treating Customers Fairly) is a worthy stance but one that does require an in-depth understanding and knowledge of the client and transaction in question. Only when an adviser is in possession of relevant and accurate information can they hope to provide appropriate and suitable advice.
There continues to exist within the mortgage market a bewildering array of choice when recommending lenders and lending schemes. The mortgage sourcing companies provide advisers with essential tools allowing them to search these options. However, the results and accuracy of any sourcing exercise will be based upon the information declared by the client. In other words you can only expect to get accurate information out of a system if accurate information has first gone into it. As we all know eligibility for many of the lending schemes promoted is strictly controlled by the clients’ credit profile and the property value. By delivering this information to the adviser prior to undertaking the mortgage sourcing exercise Verifi enhances the advisers’ ability to find and recommend the most appropriate option available.
There are number of tangible advantages both to the adviser and the client in undertaking this process. Not least is the potential to speed up the advisory and application processes. Being able to target a suitable lending scheme with the knowledge that the client will be eligible reduces the need to submit Decision in Principals and removes the possibility of case rejection by a lender following submission. The increasing cost of application and booking fees and the non refundable nature of many means that clients could lose substantial sums of money should they fail to meet a lenders scheme requirements. An alternative to losing fees may involve the lender cascading the client to a less appropriate and inevitably more expensive scheme which could result in long term additional cost. Neither of these situations will engender goodwill between client and adviser and could be potentially damaging to the health of a clients bank account.
The objective of Verifi Solutions and our application of the “Intelligent Information” concept is to deliver to advisers’ at the most relevant time information which will impact positively on their approach to a client assisting in the accuracy and quality of the advice and recommendations provided “enabling better advice”.
