The lender is offering the cash so that advisers can use their own solicitor and don’t miss out on outstanding client fees being paid at completion.
Currently, customers using a fee-charging adviser can pay up front or pay an advance up front and the remainder on completion, when the fee is deducted from the total money paid to the solicitor in the property transaction.
However, where a mortgage includes free legals, there is currently no provision for the solicitor to deduct the remainder of the broker fee and transfer that to the intermediary.
Woolwich is currently negotiating with its solicitor partners to solve this issue so that solicitors will be able to transfer outstanding broker fees, though the £300 cash back is on offer in the interim.
Speaking at the MAB sales conference today in Derby, David Finlay, head of intermediary at Woolwich, said: “In a world where we lenders are encouraging brokers to charge a fee we need to be in a position where we can facilitate that being paid.
“We have seen a lot of this happening recently and we are trying to address it. As such we are offering fee-charging brokers £300 cash back so the client can use their own solicitor and instruct them to repay the outstanding fee amount to their adviser.”
