In two day’s time, tomorrow will be yesterday. Or as our IT chums might say, ‘Why put off something until tomorrow when you could put it off forever?’
The amount of column inches given over to the supposed clamour to advance the technology in our industry brings a wry smile to my face. Sure, everyone talks a good game but they know subconsciously the consumer will benefit in the main and everyone else will be rushing to find new vocations.
That’s why some of the dinosaurs in the large lenders are self-appointed to run these initiatives. They do not know the terminology and so when the IT bods say they have ‘other priorities’ they take it on the chin and nod in approval because they cannot question otherwise – let’s face it most, of the world believed in the ‘Millennium Bug’. Combine this with the bureaucracy built up in these institutions over the years, they tread water, knowing that a couple of extra years away from the wife and bunce in the pension fund are good alternatives. But these dinosaurs may yet prove to be all our salvation.
Some brokers will bury their heads in the sand and shake their fists in defiance, saying: ‘The public will never be able to cope without us – they are just more confused when they use the internet.’ Wise words – but wasn’t it the computer that largely helped land man on the moon?
We have recently conducted remote training with a group of our brokers on Trigold, whereby they logged-in from their separate offices and received a live tutorial by someone who was 50 miles away. They could ask questions at their free-will and were shown independently on their own machine how to navigate. Who’s to say Halifax could not run something like this with a CeMap qualified employee? Helping Joe Public complete the details on their website. Taking it a step further, it could be manned 24/7 – something most brokers could not do.
Back from the future, thankfully, the dinosaurs are supported by the very people who they think they are in charge of – the IT mob. While the ‘Powers-That-Be’ may think they are working on mortgage application mapping, the reality is they will be forming a force-field around a system which hasn’t actually been built yet.
While all these seemingly oblivious ‘stop the clock’ measures go on, the lender’s business development manager (BDM) gets thrown into the situation of repeating themselves, parrot fashion. ‘It’s coming soon, but I don’t want to promise when’, and, ‘Well let’s just say next quarter’.
Call me a cynic, but these are the same BDMs that were fed and imparted the spiel ‘the world is our oyster now we have been bought by one of the biggest lenders on the planet’.
Another valid reason why things appear to take so long is brokers are treated as second class citizens –‘another mouth to feed – packagers and networks as third class citizens –‘yet another mouth to feed’. Direct-to-consumer is the champion and holy grail. It will happen for the lenders – I’m convinced. Sure it’ll take time, but it’ll happen, and when it does, the irony is the decision makers won’t be needed anymore.
But please, in the meantime, pipe down about the wonderful plans you have for us.
Mainstream
There’s nothing like rising rates to stimulate scrambling activity onto fixed rates. Bristol & West has seen the market position as an opportunity to improve its retention strategy and re-launched into the three-year arena.
Two-year fixes are now the wrong side of 5 per cent. Nationwide is at 5.04 per cent, Abbey is at 5.19 per cent and Alliance & Leicester is perched at 5.24 per cent
Buy-to-let
Many lenders align their rental calculations to Bank Base Rate and the recent news has pushed many of the products out of reach. We have already seen a shift towards the self-cert methods of assessing affordability, combined with the more favourable letting agent’s assessments.
Lenders that stick to their policies of rental cover validated by a surveyor are trying to counteract the situation. CHL Mortgages and The Mortgage Works (TMW) are typical advocates of extending the tie-in beyond of the benefit period to get the payrate down and basing the assessment on that. Another, perhaps more favourable, addition is Mortgage Trust’s one-year product at 4.55 per cent, without extended early repayment charges.
Self-cert
CHL Mortgages has finally dispensed with its accountant’s questionnaire.
Amber Homeloans will now lend to first-time buyers. The loan size is capped at £250,000 at a 90 per cent loan-to-value (LTV).
Breaking out from the pack, TMW now lends 85 per cent LTV to £1 million. It also lends £600,000 at 90 per cent LTV for applicants within distinguished careers, lovingly dubbed ‘seasoned professionals’.
Adverse
When Amber Homeloans launched its original non-conforming to non-conforming remortgage at 85 per cent LTV, it took the market by surprise. It proved too good to be true, but, not wanting to disappoint, it has re-structured the product, lowering the LTV to 80 per cent LTV, but stripping out the need to show the mortgage track record.
Rooftop reset its LIBOR at 5.54 per cent on the 17/1/07 only to change to 5.26 per cent a couple of days later.
