why a broker and not your bank?
What your bank won’t tell you
A broker can look at the whole of the market for you so, while your bank is a great place to start, you really should look at a few different options. Your bank will only be able to offer one range of products: its own. This will not give you any idea about what else is out there, in fact, they won’t encourage you to look but we think it’s really important that you do.
In our experience, banks are trying to claw back mortgage business and will often push a 5 or 10 minute conversation and a credit check on you when you’re in there for other business. After this all too brief chat, we find that banks are giving customers vague ideas as to how much they can borrow and telling them to go out house shopping. Unfortunately this all too often results in the customers returning to their bank to be told that the offer doesn’t actually exist or that they don’t actually qualify for it. We don’t think 5 or 10 minutes is enough or that it is fair to credit check clients without going through the things properly.
After all, you don’t settle on the first plumber’s quote you get or the first car insurance quote you get and just think how much more is at stake with your mortgage. Our brokers will always spend time with you, whether face to face or over the phone, to make sure you get the best mortgage deal available to you.
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No doubt you will notice how heavily banks and building societies market their mortgage products, on television, on the billboards on the street and in their branches, at any opportunity their representatives in branch will book you an appointment to see one of their staff. Each member of staff in branch works to targets, whether those targets are based on booking appointments with their mortgage advisor or their investments advisor or so on. Once they’ve got you facing the mortgage advisor, that advisor has targets to secure your mortgage business and put it through their bank. In fact, that is largely how they are paid, on commission. They will know that they are probably not offering the most competitive mortgage deal available to you but it is a rare branch advisor who will tell you that !
Once they’ve talked to you about your mortgage business, they will almost certainly try to talk to you about all the other products the bank can sell you: savings, pensions, investments. For each one of these products that you agree to they can pass you over to their investments colleague, they will make some extra commission. So it’s not for your benefit that they’re making you feel so looked after !
But the really important message here is that these advisors simply can’t advise you on the whole of the mortgage market. They can’t even advise you on a small selection of mortgage deals from other lenders. They are there to do one thing and one thing only: to sell their employer’s products. There is only one range of products available to them and they are targeted to sell you as much off that range as they can, including mortgage, insurance, savings products, credit cards…. So if these advisors can only talk to you about one range of mortgage deals, how are you going to know that you’ve found the cheapest monthly payments ? How are you going to know that you’ve been offered the most competitive mortgage deal or home insurance quote ? You simply won’t.
You might also be interested to know that advisors in banks and building societies often do not have to achieve the level of qualifications that our brokers have. Why would that be ? Simple, they do not have to be qualified or experienced in looking at the whole of the mortgage market or making specific recommendations for you. They only have to know one line of mortgage deals.
We also think it is important that you have the full story. It might be comforting to have all your eggs in one basket but there are very good reasons as to why you should not. For instance, did you know that if you fall behind on your mortgage payments and you’re lucky enough to have savings with the same bank, they have a right to “offset” your arrears from your savings account ? That means they can dip into your savings account to take what you owe. Doesn’t sound attractive does it ?
You will also no doubt have heard that your savings are secure in a bank only to a certain level, £………………, and beyond that, should the bank go down, you may lose the rest of your hard saved cash. We’re not here to advise you on savings and investments but we are here to make sure that you consider the full picture. So once our brokers have discussed your long term goals, found you the cheapest monthly payments and the most suitable mortgage deal for you, they will also make sure that you’ve considered whether you need to speak to an independent savings, investments and pensions expert who, again, can look at what is best out there for you.