Last week Mortgage Introducer exclusively revealed the bonus proc fee for cases submitted online through Northern Rock Online, the Mortgage Trading Exchange (MTE) and Trigold. Nigel Pamment, senior mortgage consultant at Inspirational Financial Management, contacted MI with his concerns, citing a recent case which had resulted in conflicting amounts of borrowing offered by the system and over the telephone.
Pamment agreed the process of completing applications online is a step in the right direction but expressed his concerns with the accuracy of Northern Rock’s new online decision system.
He said: “What is the point of technology if it doesn’t work? What if I had taken the advice of my BDM who is promoting the all-singing, all-dancing system that it wants us all to use to save it time and had taken the online decision as read? The old telephone DIP system may lead me to be £150 worse off in the future but it is what I’ll be using.”
“I urge Northern Rock to get its act together. It used to be a good broker-focused lender with good products. Don’t start forgetting the basic principles that we need and the main one is to be accurate,” he added.
Ron Stout, assistant director of public relations at Northern Rock, said: “We are sorry to learn a broker has had difficulties but the response from the market in general has been good and we will continue to develop our systems. There is an ongoing investigation into this particular case as we believe data was input incorrectly at the outset.”
