Bank of Ireland (BoI) has been forced to withdraw all of its standard and standard EasySwitch remortgage products from the market due to it being unable to deal with increased levels of business. BoI has informed brokers it will take over two weeks before cases are fully underwritten.
In an e-mail sent to intermediaries, BoI, parent company of Bristol & West Mortgages, said: ‘We have received unprecedented levels of mortgage applications over the last few weeks. This, together with our recent product withdrawal, has caused a backlog of 12 working days in cases waiting to be underwritten.
‘We have taken the difficult decision to withdraw all our standard and standard EasySwitch remortgage products as of 5pm on Wednesday 28 September in order to further protect our service standards.’
Mike Fitzgerald, sales director at Brentchase Financial Services, commented: “Brokers have been plagued recently by poor service from lenders. BoI is normally quite efficient with its service. But if you don’t have the capability to deal with increased volumes when bringing out good products, don’t bring out the products.”
Ian Bates, national account manager at BoI, said: “We’re working evenings and weekends to get things back to normal. We have an excellent service reputation so we have withdrawn these products to protect that. We have said there is a backlog of 12 days to manage the client’s expectation. But realistically, the backlog is about seven to eight days.”
Platform has also admitted it is suffering from service problems but denied one claim that it was taking 24 days to look at cases.
Paul Hunt, head of marketing at Platform, said: “We have had a huge influx of business and we are working hard towards meeting all our turnaround targets. We are doing as much as we can. A number of other lenders are in the same boat in terms of processing business. It seems to be a general problem in the market at the moment.
“But it is not taking 24 days for us to look at cases. If that was the case, we would be extremely concerned.”
