Craig Scott, director of Commercial 1, said he has experienced the practice with various mainstream lenders on several occasions.
“Time, effort, not to mention money has gone into putting that deal together,” said Scott. “We’ve had examples where the customer has gone through that with us, it’s been rejected by their bank, but when they’ve then gone to their bank direct the deal gets sanctioned.
“From a broker point of view, especially a specialist, it really does stick in your throat.”
Andy Young, chief executive of TBMC, said it was no different from the residential market.
“One week you’ll get a case you know goes through one month and with credit scoring the following month that identical case will be declined,” he said.
Mortgages for Business managing director David Whittaker agreed: “There are instances where this happens no matter how hard you try to avoid it.”
But Barclays Business has condemned the practice by lenders.
Adam Rowse, customer and commercial director at Barclays Business, said: “Categorically I would say that we would never ever treat a case that way. The customer comes through whether it’s a broker introduced case or comes directly into us. It’s exactly the same credit criteria.
“Sometimes accidents may happen but I don’t think there should be any deliberate policy on this and definitely not from us in terms of how we treat customers. If you have got specific examples then shoot them through to me because we would look at this.”
Rowse added that brokers are key to plans Barclays has to grow its commercial mortgage lending “significantly over the next 12 months”.
Peter Caldicott has recently joined the lender as national business development manager to help deliver this objective. He was formerly head of HSBC’s commercial broker proposition.
The lender also recently announced it would pay brokers 75% of the lending fee for business introduced between 1 July and 30 September 2011 – up from the normal 50%.
“We are actively out there looking to grow our business in the broker market significantly over the next 12 months and have brought on Peter to build that for us,” said Rowse.
“We’re aiming to launch a whole new strategy. We’ve already done that with increasing the fee that we pay for three months from 50% to 75% to brokers and intermediaries.
“That’s only the beginning of it. Peter is working hard to reposition us in that market and we can’t build strong relationships with brokers if we’re cutting brokers out.”
The three month fee offer is available on commercial mortgage (owner occupied), residential property investment and commercial property investment introductions to Barclays Business.
