Ian Crampton, sales director at Ferndown Ltd, explained he had recently received the MTE standalone and was impressed with it but then discovered a future fee would be introduced and warned this would put off some brokers from the offering. He said: “It is a useful system but should be free across the board. The introduction of a fee will affect one and two-man-bands who don’t need any extra costs.”
London-based sole broker Roy New said: “It should be free. Brokers shouldn’t have to pay to send cases through to lenders; enough money is being made out of us already.”
Mark Lofthouse, chief executive of Mortgage Brain, defended the system saying it’s free for all brokers until July 2006 and then a maximum of £10 per month for those who are putting through four or less transactions a month. He said: “We guarantee that any monthly payment will be £10 or less per month and it will affect a small minority of brokers.”
Bill Safran, chief executive of Trigold, explained he was genuinely surprised to hear brokers will be expected to pay to use this online service. He said: “It’s a little bizarre to charge a broker for sending electronic transactions to lenders considering there is no open MTE standard to integrate with other desktop systems.
“There would be additional work for the broker who would re-enter multiple pages of client details into a new system. Trigold’s ‘ETC-free’ guarantees brokers, Trigold users or not, will never be charged for sending online applications to a lender."
