Daniel Gale, operations manager at Help Personal Finance, said he was curious to know why lenders did not forewarn intermediaries of withdrawal when they knew the funding was running out.
He also claimed that lenders must be able see when people are borrowing on certain products and therefore should know how long the funding is going to last. This could then enable them to give a suitable notice period for the product’s withdrawal.
Gale commented: “We have seen a lot of brokers disappear from the market and I wonder how much of this was due to products being pulled with no notice after the broker has paid to generate the enquiry, for a mortgage reference, a courier, a full valuation and all of the wasted time in manpower.
“If you’ve got several cases with a couple of lenders who pull products quickly and don’t honour their pipeline applications it can actually put the broker out of business. Even in the best case scenario you’ve still got to re-work all of those cases.”
Philip Tebbatt, sole principal at Slater Rhodes, said: “I have to say that in the current market I have some sympathy with lenders.
"The problem with the current environment is that if lenders give too much notice it will become more widely known among their competitors, who can jump in and take their business.
“My view is that brokers need to take lenders to task about it and there is no reason why brokers cannot talk to lenders to agree some sort of priority. It is not a lender who is sitting across a desk from a disgruntled customer.”
