An industry source told Mortgage Introducer that Halifax was holding up submitted applications, leading to client and broker delays. He said: “When you put an online application through to Halifax Premier it is taking over two weeks for the underwriting to be looked at.”
However, Paul Fincham, press officer at Halifax, argued that the delay was probably more due to problems with individual applications rather than the processing unit.
He said: “The two-week delay mentioned within our Premier service does not seem to be the case, and clients can expect the high levels of service to remain. There are some delays on a small number of cases, but many of these are where more information is required or where paperwork from the adviser is being chased up.”
Fincham went on to add that delays within Halifax Premier were being dealt with quickly and effectively. James Carter, IFA at Virtue Financial, said the increased use of technology may be the cause of some delays and application build-ups, with quicker ways to submit information such as information re-population giving the provider more cases to sort through in a quicker period of time.
“Does submitting online and much smaller turnaround from seeing clients through to submission mean these backlogs pile up quicker?” Carter asked.
