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Brokers - how are you reaching out to struggling clients?

Journalist: John Fitzsimons, Freelance

ended 01. August 2023

Morning brokers

Yesterday we had UK Finance announcing its ‘Reach Out’ campaign, for later this year which is aimed at boosting awareness of the support available to mortgage borrowers (https://www.mortgagesolutions.co.uk/news/2023/07/31/uk-finance-launches-reach-out-campaign-to-raise-awareness-of-mortgage-support/).

We would like to get a sense of what your business is doing to reach out to borrowers who might be having issues with their repayments, whether they are existing clients or prospective new ones. 

How are you going about opening those conversations, or getting in contact with potential new clients? 

What are those conversations looking like - is there particular types of help that these clients would most benefit from?

And what is the role of the broker here - what else can advisers do beyond signposting?

 

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Nicola Schutrups
Managing Director at The Mortgage Hut / William James Wealth Management
As a business we treat our customers in similar way to how an IFA will treat their wealth or pension clients.

Our team conduct annual reviews or client calls to review their mortgage, protection and discuss any options they may have.

We also have regular client contact via our email nurture process and via our branded app on iOS and Android.

It's just really important to create touch points where you can have meaningful two way conversation and support clients wherever possible.
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Stephen Perkins
Managing Director at Yellow Brick Mortgages
We are not directly calling clients around this, but are sharing information and inviting anyone to contact us to discuss their situation if needed. The key is to look at their situation and the available options, which if tied in, will likely be with their existing lender direct. However we can advise what option may be best, give them the full detail and risks and how they plan to restore it in 6 months to avoid their credit rating being impacted. Also making them aware of the risk that lenders may still look unfavourably on having this support even if their credit rating is not impacted. As long as borrowers have the right information and can make a fully informed decision then we have done our job. For some we speak to, they can cope without the support and we would advise not using the support unless truly needed.
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Lee Gathercole
Co-Founder at Rebus Financial Services
The majority of mortgages we are doing at the moment is to help homeowners deal with the significant rise in interest rates, it's a stressful time. It is important that mortgage holders start to review their mortgage at least 6 months before their product expiry date and that's the point we start contacting our current clients. This then gives them the best opportunity to review all the options available to them and of course, secure a rate as early as possible, especially with rates changing all the time.

We are starting to see clients consider alternative options like part & part, interest only, and an increased mortgage term to cushion the blow. All of these come with some risks but can reduce your monthly mortgage payments to make them more manageable.

The benefit of using a mortgage broker will be able to help understand what options are available to them from the market and will also be able to keep tabs on the most cost-effective mortgage deals as they change over time.