"It is apparent through conversations with intermediaries and lenders that transparency with regards to expected service levels is vitally important to all parties."
Despite the difficulties of the pandemic, the housing market is currently seeing raised activity levels, with many lenders receiving record volumes of applications. However, this is having a knock-on effect on lender service levels and how quickly they are able to respond to applications as they continue to respond to the operational challenges brought by the pandemic.
Mortgage Brain's new report aggregates information made available directly on lender’s websites to help keep advisers updated, covering aspects such as average wait times to speak to different departments and typical application processing times.
The information, displayed within the Covid-19 support hub on Mortgage Brain’s Criteria Hub website, will be automatically updated every working day, while those lenders without the technology or capacity to display service standards will have the option of providing daily updates if they wish.
Neil Wyatt, sales and marketing director at Mortgage Brain, commented: “With the unprecedented levels of applications and requests, lenders are doing their utmost to cope with the demand on their operations. It is apparent through conversations with intermediaries and lenders that transparency with regards to expected service levels is vitally important to all parties.
“Providing brokers with a single view of lenders’ service levels will save brokers time visiting multiple websites and at the same time help provide valuable information that allows all parties to be absolutely transparent when making recommendations and setting clear expectations. It will also support lenders by setting broker expectations to avoid any unnecessary calls to processing teams or helpdesks for updates when it is clear that it is unlikely to have been reviewed as this may help some lenders free up additional capacity.”