Following a case in which Cheval completed, a £3.5 million transaction in record time on behalf of one of its clients, it urged brokers to take the lead and set their own agenda and timeframe for lenders to follow.
With calls for lenders to take a greater appreciation of the role of brokers, Mark Posniak, marketing manager at Cheval, argued 2006 would see brokers moving away from lenders who could not provide a quick and succinct service.
He said: “Lenders that rely on intermediaries should be doing more to offer a service which meets the needs of brokers rather than imposing a ‘take it or leave it’ standard. I believe more and more brokers will vote with their feet in 2006 and work with lenders who can get the job done in the broker’s timeframe, not the product provider’s.”
However, Phil Perry, director at ARK Financial Planning, argued setting a short time frame was not realistically possible. He said: “Brokers are usually the ones being led and there are too many people involved in the lending and decision-making side for brokers to dictate. Although we would like to be able to set a timeframe for the lender to adhere to, it would be hard to make it a firm date.”
“From our point of view we do have a timeframe we like to keep to, six to eight weeks from start to finish, but that is dictated by the legal advisers and how long it takes to complete their end of the work, so it can’t be exact and every offer is different,” Perry added.
