Am I right in thinking that before you can ascertain what the best way forward is for your client, an important piece of information is the amount outstanding on a mortage? I thought so. So why does Woolwich need a signed declaration from the client before it will release this information? It defeats the object to me, and is just another job that we have to get done on top of our ever-increasing workload. This, in my mind, is a step backwards as Woolwich never used to do this and other mortgage lenders who have retention policies in place don’t either.
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What was the answer to my question when I asked why Woolwich had resorted to this policy? You guessed it – the old Data Protection Act. I have, for a long time, been complaining about this through the press and lenders and was hoping that, as lender retention policies were starting to take shape, we were getting somewhere, and we would eventually be able to contact most lenders regarding existing mortgages. It seems not.
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This a major step backwards in my mind and I don’t accept the Data Protection issue. Is it that the lender wants to be seen to offer the retention, but wishes to put obstacles in brokers’ way so we may have second thoughts about doing it, therefore leaving the path open for lenders to go direct to our client and not have to pay us? This thought may be cynical but I am open to an explanation from Woolwich and would like to ask Halifax, for example, how it gets around the so-called Data Protection Act as it used to be one of the worst for trying to get information from, but seems to have seen the light. I, for one, now find its process straightforward.
Kind Regards
Nigel Pamment
Inspirational Financial Management
Emma Austin from Barclays, responds: “This issue is clearly one of Data Protection and protecting our customers’ confidential information by not disclosing it to someone who is effectively a third party. We take this approach to protect our customers.”
Emma Austin., Barclays
