A Mortgage Introducer source criticised Woolwich over its identity verification certificate, which enables online applicants to bypass the need to provide address and identification confirmation. The broker said he was doing an application for a standard residential remortgage and submitted the application, but then encountered problems.
He said: “The verification certificate is intended as a substitute for certified copies, but after completing the application Woolwich called me and said that it had received it but it still required a certified copy of the client’s address. When I asked why, it said it was because the application was 95 per cent loan-to-value (LTV), and more risk.
“This is an absurd piece of underwriting criteria; the application process should be the same regardless of the financial situation, not one way or the other. Woolwich’s excuse is that the case is high risk so it can change the application criteria. This is supposed to be a substitute which many lenders do, but I have never had an instance where a lender does and doesn’t accept it on different cases – it seems to be a case of it finding work for brokers to do.”
David Finlay, intermediary business director at Woolwich, said: “We reserve the right to request additional information on all our cases and in some instances but not solely because of the LTV we will make this very rare request. We cannot comment on the circumstances in this case without investigating further, which we will be happy to do if the broker passes us the application number.”
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