Julie Gaskin, corporate relations manager for GMAC-RFC, said that packagers were becoming increasingly important for brokers and lenders alike, as lenders were forced to constantly change their criteria to match funding difficulties and brokers struggled to keep up.
She said the current climate was an opportunity for packagers to re-invent themselves again as a vital element for brokers’ placing cases.
However, Gaskin pointed out that smaller packagers would have to find a niche to carve out for themselves in order to survive the financial markets crisis, while bigger packagers would continue to have the clout to access lender product exclusives.
Gaskin said: “People go to packagers with quirky criteria that they don’t know where to place. Packagers are like a criteria oracle.
“Brokers’ options will be greater with packagers. Brokers will try them when they would have dismissed them before, as they are finding it difficult to place cases.
" People, without doubt, are having to change how they work. They are looking for certainty in an uncertain market. Packagers are now going to their second tier panel or to lenders that weren’t prepared to work with them before.”
Bill Warren, director of associate members for the Regulatory Alliance of Mortgage Packagers (RAMP), commented: “Increasing numbers of intermediaries are attempting to place cases with mortgage packagers when they haven’t attempted to do so before, for the very reasons that GMAC-RFC has said.
“There other reason is the flight to quality and lenders are showing this. The whole surge is building up.”
