The pilot will allow brokers to use the solicitor of their choice. The four brokers involved in the pilot are AWD, Hadenglen, Moneyquest and Diamond Lifestyle. Packagers Pink Home Loans and Praxis will start using the facility later this month.
The pilot has gone live with the current product range and standard fees have been reduced.
Duncan Berry, director of mortgage sales for GE Money Home Lending, said: “This is good news for end customers, brokers and packagers. Ultimately it offers them more choice and shows our continued commitment to delivering flexible solutions and demonstrates ease of doing business with us.
“The current internal solicitors model works very well for our traditional broker community focusing on remortgage deals. However, with the external solicitors pilot, for the first time, we are able to make the igroup product portfolio available to our established packager channels that service both the remortgage and purchase markets. We have developed excellent relationships with packagers and this pilot is a direct response to their feedback.”
David Copland, marketing director for Pink, said: “We already have a great relationship with GE through its First National product range. We are really excited about becoming involved in the pilot and having this opportunity to work with the igroup products, which we feel will complement our existing product portfolio.”
Andrew Forsey, director of Andrew Forsey Financial Services, welcomed the move. “Being able to use an external solicitor is a lot better. We probably will look to use it now, as we have not looked at it in a very long time. Its products weren’t very competitive before, but ones I’ve seen recently have been very good.”
