Nigel Stockton, financial services director at Countrywide, said transparent communication between lenders and brokers is a must to combat fraud and that Santander was a particularly good example of a lender keeping distributors in the loop when potential problems arose.
Stockton said: “The transparent communication is key. The more partnership there is between the lender and broker and the more they’re working together on impaired cases the better that will be.”
Santander said it was committed to working in partnership with the industry to tackle fraud.
A spokeswoman at Abbey for Intermediaries said: “We believe close interaction and open communication between lenders, distributors and intermediaries is integral to this.
“In cases where we remove a broker from our panel because of suspected fraudulent activity, we will always notify their network if applicable and the regulator.”
Stockton said this approach was “much better” than just four or five years ago when suspicions were kept under wraps from networks.
Santander recently hosted a mortgage fraud forum attended by compliance representatives from all of its distribution key accounts.
“This was designed to support our intermediary partners by raising awareness of what fraudulent activity can look like in today’s market and sharing best practice to tackle it,” AfI added.
A report last year by the accountancy firm BDO Stoy Hayward said mortgage fraud accounted for 20% of all known cases of fraud in the UK.
Meanwhile Experian said attempted mortgage fraud increased by 7% quarter-on-quarter during the first three months of 2011 with 34 in every 10,000 applications uncovered as fraudulent.
The start of this year was the second busiest period for mortgage fraud ever recorded by Experian’s Fraud Index and was eclipsed only by Q2 2010, when the rate reached 35 in every 10,000 applications.
