Alan Lakey, senior partner at Highclere Financial Services, said over the last few months he has seen brokers being abandoned by various lenders when it comes to completing a mortgage deal.
“After becoming involved with the client and introducing them to a lender everything would go fine, up until completion. At this point I was told that I could not view any of the information, as it would breach ‘data protection’.”
Lakey went on to add: “It seems as though data protection is used as an excuse to leave brokers out of the loop. This makes it easier for the lender to retain customers when it comes to remortgaging.”
Thomas Reeh, chief executive of blackandwhite.co.uk, expressed his own concerns about the system: “What worries me is the fact that once the mortgage has been completed the lender will then try to cross-sell items that we may have already provided.”
Halifax and Portman have come under the spotlight but refuted the claims. Helen Shaw, spokesperson for the Portman, said: “Every company should be following data protection and we will always ask for written permission from the client before we refer back to the intermediary.
“For all we know the client may have changed broker and we do not want to be giving out personal information to the wrong people.”
· See cover feature on page 38.
