Sue Cox, business development manager for Bananas Inc, said: “It would save an absolute fortune in time and money if we could have a generic mortgage application form that every lender could personalise.”
However, lenders said the move is unlikely in the foreseeable future, with the wide array of lending criteria and different underwriting processes, which are still seen as major obstacles.
Jeff Knight, head of sales and marketing at GMAC-RFC, said: “Some packagers do have generic application forms for a number of lenders, but many of these have additional information for each lender, which means there is still not one standard form.”
Julian Wells, head of marketing at Mortgages plc, said: “If you were to put all the information that all the lenders required on one form you would end up with something along the lines of the Domesday book.”
But Wells did concede that if a generic system could be agreed, it was ‘a great idea in theory’.
Bananas Inc has announced a branded lending operation with SPML, which it expects will generate an additional £50 million in lending volumes.
