Brokers - what is the ideal 'lender contact' for you?

For me and the team at VIBE Specialist Finance it is important to have relationships with individuals at lenders, this means not only is there some accountability but when help is needed a specific person group of people who the relationship is with can step in to help out.

The only advantage I can see of 1 single line is coverage for when someone may be out of the office or in meetings but the relationship aspect described above far outweighs this in my eyes.

Ideal communication is a combination of phone calls, emails and in-person meetings ultimately leading to quick and accurate responses for clients

One number to call, for Santander, that queues everyone in a tidy order for the rest of their lives ISN'T what financial advice firms need to do with their days. Often on any line to a lender you can spend 40 minutes waiting to get to speak to someone, is this new initiative going to improve this situation or just allow the lender to shrink down even further their staff levels? It's true we don't need many numbers for a lender, one to query cases initially and talk through their nuances, one to get to speak to the actual decision maker for the case, and one to deal with post-offer legal matters. We do like a live chat session that allows us to carry on with other work while we are waiting for someone to become free at a lender - it saves your ears from the endless Tchaikovsky. Our go-to lender to quote for excellent telephone support is Accord, the financial adviser-only lender, they work on a team basis and we always know how to get through to a decision-maker quite quickly on a case.

Call me old fashioned (many do) but I like a named contact, an experienced business development manager with good knowledge of their employers' criteria, processes and excellent relationships with the head office so that they can get things done and properly support me. I don't need this to be face-to-face; I have some excellent lender contacts who are office based and we call or do virtual meetings and that works really well. What I cannot stand is Live Chat, call centre "your call is important to us" (then why am I on hold for 45 minutes?) and BDM's who do nothing but tell me to call someone else, rather than having the ability to help me themselves. The one thing I really do miss is being able to email lenders. When I have a complex case the ability to email the inquiry to multiple lenders is a massive time saver for me; rather than having to contact 4 or 5 lenders individually to check criteria points with them, if it's a 45-minute wait for each that's at least 3 hours wasted.

Direct contact with a BDM and/or underwriter is my preference, and a single contact number for any post-application queries. The standout lender for me is Accord Mortgages, who have always been great to deal with. Lenders with more work to do include Barclays and Santander.

When it comes to the ideal ‘lender contact’, our approach is having a solid support team readily available over the phone.

We work with a powerful combination of fantastic BDM, combined with knowledgeable phone service.

Spread thickly over all this is a quick, responsive live chat.

Inevitably, we get different types of inquiries, and depending on their flavour, they require different styles of contact.

That translates to live chat for quick, simple clarification. After that, it’s the phone service to unpack and discuss the details.