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How helpful has your network been this year?

Journalist: John Fitzsimons, Freelance

ended 12. July 2023

Mortgage brokers, would be great to get a sense of how helpful your network has been of late.

It's been a time of great upheaval in the mortgage market, with an incredible rate of withdrawals and repricing of products.

Has it been helpful being a member of a network during this time? Has there been any benefit to doing so, compared with being directly authorised?

We have data showing that Q2 saw the big networks gaining more brokerages than they lost - to what degree do you think the current market is behind that?

Or is Consumer Duty acting as a prompt for some to seek the support of a network?

All thoughts on the attractions or otherwise of networks at the moment are very welcome!

 

 

6 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Daniel Hobbs
Managing Director at New Leaf Distribution
Writing from a networks perspective, I believe in recent years with lots of regulatory change, networks can really earn their stripes and bring great value to brokers.

We have dedicated compliance teams that have worked hard on the AR regime, consumer duty and act as a shield from firms.

It’s where networks that don’t prepare or leave compliance instructions until the last minute before a deadline that riles the brokers.

Also the cost of being DA now is increasing and actually you’re not necessarily better off financially anymore if you choose to be DA.

It all comes down to risk - do you want to take the risk of your advice to the grave? Or do you want a network to take care of that for you?

If the latter, choosing the right network is a no brainer , but definitely do your due diligence first and check the network offering before you commit.
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Jamie Alexander
Mortgage Director at Alexander Southwell Mortgages
We're big supporters of The Openwork partnership. Their support has proved invaluable but on the flip side, they also leave us alone to get on with our job.

Their communication has been exceptional, particularly regarding the implementation of Consumer Duty. They've gone the extra mile by establishing an information hub and consistently updating us on process changes.

Ultimately, their primary goal is to ensure our safety, and they excel at it.
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Luke Thompson
Director at PAB Wealth Management
If I can answer this anonymously. I will be a lot more honest than if not.
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Joe Stallard
Director and Advisor at House and Holiday Home Mortgages
We’re big fans of Mortgage Intelligence. Their support has been more important than ever in the last few months, and they've really risen to the challenge.

They’ve been excellent with communications throughout, especially with regard to Consumer Duty. To help us aclimatise to this, they've created a hub of information and multiple notifications of process changes.

At the end of the day, they’re there to keep us safe, and that's exactly what they do.
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Scott Taylor-Barr
Principal Adviser at Barnsdale Financial Management
With Consumers Duty I think that my practice being within a network has been vital, the sheer volume of documentation from FCA that would have needed reading, analyzing and actioning would have paralyzed my business for weeks on end; having suitably trained and qualified people at The Openwork Partnership do that for me and then deliver the required changes in systems and process to ensure meet the new standard has been essential, as it has allowed me to maintain my focus on delivering quality advice to clients in a very turbulent and fast-paced market.
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Alastair Hoyne
CEO, Finanze Capital at Finanze Capital
A big benefit of being part of a network is that often your network costs are taken as a % of the deals you arrange with a smaller monthly payment. This means that if you are struggling to place business its very unlikely you will be spending more on compliance, admin, crm systems etc than you are making from deals. Whereas being directly authorised you will need to pay for these costs regardless so its solace for the broker in a network to know even if times get really tough in the mortgage market they wont be loosing money. I think the market is very much behind network growth, brokers want as much security as they can get in these uncertain times whether that be due to them struggling to write business or the forever increasing levels of compliance/ consumer duty that need to be adhered to