David Oastler, partner at Mortgage Business, was planning to put his client on a Halifax retention product until she was contacted directly by the lender and offered a special offer product normally reserved for remortgages to Halifax.
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Oastler said: “I had been looking to keep her with Halifax on one of its product transfer rates. Halifax spoke to her directly as well and rather than confirm the retention rate, it offered her something better if she dealt direct with it.
“Halifax confirmed to me that it’s a special offer, only available for a short time and not through brokers. The business development manager justified this by saying it’s a free market, which left me with the feeling it just wanted to look after itself.”
Halifax insisted that it always contacted the customer directly to inform them they were close to the end of their deal but, in this case, it admitted the client had likely fallen under a pilot scheme it was undertaking.
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Paul Fincham, senior media relations officer at Halifax, explained: “The reason for the pilot is to understand what products people want. It is being done with a very small percentage of clients and we are offering them exclusive deals directly. We are doing this direct so that any contact the client has off the back of these deals comes straight to us.”
Fincham insisted the pilot was being done to help it react swiftly in a competitive marketplace and would help enhance its broker offering.
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“Brokers are crucial to our business and anything we learn from the pilot will in the long-term improve our broker proposition by providing brokers and their clients with the products they want.”
