At a second joint roundtable between the Financial Intermediary & Broker Association (FIBA) and the Association of Short Term Lenders (ASTL) brokers, lenders and solicitors agreed lenders need to be clear on information required for DIPs.
Delegates thought lenders should be setting a minimum standard for introduced applications to avoid a domino effect of negative outcomes caused by sub-standard submissions.
However, brokers queried the amount of information required for a DIP. Therefore, the panel agreed that lenders needed to be clear on the type and amount of information they required.
Adam Tyler, executive chairman of FIBA said: “Under this joint initiative between FIBA and the ASTL, our roundtable meeting demonstrated the value of bringing interested parties together from the legal, lending and broking sides to discuss and decide on actions that benefit all parties, but ultimately improves service to our customers.
“We are seeing the advantages that can be gained by trade bodies cooperating to bring their members together in this way. I think that the close cooperation of our members and the lenders will bring mutual benefits for both.
“We all want the best for our industries and members and by working together we can make a bigger impact in a shorter timescale. At FIBA, we are looking forward to working with the ASTL again as well as welcoming the opportunity to supporting our members and the industry.”
It was agreed that FIBA should collate a list of standard questions and guidelines for initial submissions, which brokers could use as a starting point.
They agreed that solicitors in an ideal world should not accept cases they aren’t set up to deal with, especially with two or three-day turnaround times in bridging finance, or when lacking the necessary sector knowledge.
Borrowers need to be guided towards the right choice of legal support for specialist cases, and brokers were claimed to be best placed to provide them with initial recommendations.
FIBA plans to compile a register of recommended solicitors for borrowers, a move which was unanimously supported by the panel, combined with the need to categorise solicitors by specialism and for the inclusion of regionally based firms.
