Shaun Vickery of The Select Partnership, a Freehold founder member, said: “Our experience is that lenders are sitting on their hands and defending their nominated packagers, even when brokers are suffering from poor service. Lenders need to be ready to terminate packagers that are clearly unable to provide intermediaries with reasonable service. I feel particularly sorry for satellite packagers who have signed up with larger players in the market and find that they are unable to get the right service for their customers.”
Research by Freehold packager members highlighted the issue that lenders paid more attention to the volume of business that their packagers produced rather than to whether basic service standards to brokers were acceptable.
Freehold, which represents 20 regional packagers and mortgage distributors, has battled since its inception for the mortgage packaging industry to adopt a guaranteed minimum service standard.
Commenting on Freehold’s findings, Roy Taylor, a broker from Lymm Manor Finance Ltd, said: “I worked with a mortgage packager who went into administration and some lenders carried on working with it because it produced a lot of business. It is up to the packagers to provide a good service. Lenders are in business to make money like all of us, so who can blame them? At the end of the day, if you are working with a good mortgage packager, stick with them.”
Paul Hunt head of marketing at Platform, said: “We are very committed to the mortgage packager industry and work closely with our packagers to provide a first-class service proposition to both them and to intermediaries. Platform makes sure that packagers understand our product criteria and lending policy and works closely with them and their staff.”
