Bank Vs Broker: Part 1
Amy Wilson of CS Mortgage Solutions explains the difference between services from a bank Mortgage Adviser and a Mortgage Broker. She’s the perfect person to talk about this, as she has worked in both roles.
What is the process when you talk to a bank’s Mortgage Adviser?
First, you call your bank and make an appointment with the adviser. While booking this appointment, often a customer service agent will ask you lots of questions and do affordability checks and explore your financial commitments, income, whether you’re self-employed, and your property plans.
This ‘pre-call’ can take anything from 20 minutes to an hour. You will also be asked to get all your mortgage documents ready – valid passport, bank statements, etc. Often you need to send these over 48 hours before you speak to the adviser. If these aren’t in place, your appointment may be delayed.
Much of the appointment with the Mortgage Adviser will involve talking through many of the details you already covered on the pre-call. This often takes an hour or two. Then, once the adviser has all the information, they go away to do a credit check and explore appropriate products.
They will usually call you back a couple of hours later with a recommendation: a product, the monthly repayments, and the documents. Exploring all the product details might take another hour.
How does it differ with a Mortgage Broker?
When you contact a Mortgage Broker your first call is normally 10-20 minutes. We’ll ask you a few questions to get a sense of what you’re looking to do. We’ll then book an appointment to talk to you in more depth.
The appointment is usually an hour to an hour and a half. This can depend on how complicated your mortgage requirement might be. If you have payslips and bank statements ready for the appointment, that’s great, but it’s not a requirement.
Different lenders require different information, so we will normally explore the lenders and the products first before asking for documentation. We recognise that mortgages and moving can be stressful, so we don’t want to add to that stress by asking for documents at too early a stage. It keeps the process simpler.
