Playbook, mortgage broker
The portal is where the access problem is, not the front door
Access on a mortgage case is rarely about a building, because most applicants never go near one. It is about a portal on a phone, a conversation that runs for well over an hour and covers income, debts and health, and a household where one person handles the paperwork for both. Those are the three places somebody gets stuck, and all three have an answer the firm can publish. What the assistant cannot do is record any of it, which has to be said rather than implied.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for accessibility requests holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The heaviest task an applicant faces is uploading a stack of documents from whatever device they own, so an access request here is far more often about a scanning step than about a step at a door.
- A fact find is long and covers income, commitments and, where protection is discussed, health, which is tiring in a way a short appointment is not, and somebody may reasonably need it split across two sessions.
- Joint applicants sit on one case but are two people with separate consents, so an arrangement where one partner handles everything has to be recorded by the firm rather than assumed from who happens to be on the phone.
- Firms note support needs so an adviser knows before the call rather than discovering it on it, and the useful answer here is how to tell them, since nothing said to an assistant is written down anywhere.
How it arrives
- i cannot manage the document upload can somebody help
- can i give you my paperwork a different way
- can my daughter deal with all this for me
- can the appointment be split into two shorter calls
- i am hard of hearing can we do this in writing
- can you send documents in large print
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The portal, and every alternative to it | How it behaves on a phone, whether a photograph is acceptable, and what the firm will do for somebody who cannot use it at all. The alternative matters more than the feature list, because the person asking has already failed at the standard route. |
|---|---|
| How somebody tells you about a support need, and what you do with it | The route, who sees it and how it reaches the adviser before the appointment. Say plainly that a note has to be recorded by a person, so nobody assumes mentioning it once in passing was enough. |
| The formats and adjustments you actually offer | Written summaries, longer or split appointments, documents in another format, a third party present on a call. List only what the firm has committed to, because an adjustment promised here and refused later is worse than never offering it. |
| What is needed for somebody to act for an applicant | The firm's own check, the consent required and its limits, including that a relative sitting in on a call is not the same as authority to give instructions. Joint and family arrangements go wrong here quietly. |
The reply
There are a few ways round the upload, and you are not the first to ask. If the portal is difficult on your phone, we can accept documents another way, and the options are set out here [1]. Appointments can be split into two shorter calls, because a first conversation covers a lot of ground and it is a long one [2]. If you would like your daughter involved, we can do that, but we need to record her permission properly first rather than take it as read. I cannot make a note of any of this myself, and I cannot tell you what you could borrow either, so leave your name and an email saying what would help and an adviser will have it in front of them before the call.
It leads with the alternative rather than with sympathy, because the person has a specific obstacle and wants it removed. The third party point is put as a step rather than a refusal, since the request is reasonable and only the process is missing. The last sentence is the important one: it says the note goes nowhere unless the person sends it, which prevents somebody arriving at an appointment assuming everybody knows.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor describes a need the published material does not cover, asks for an adjustment the firm has not committed to, or wants somebody else authorised to act for them.
I cannot record that or arrange it, and I would rather you did not have to explain it twice. Leave your name, your email and what would help, and an adviser will have it before they call you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never confirm that a support need has been noted, because nothing typed here reaches a case file, an adviser or anybody at all.
- Never agree that a relative or a partner can act for an applicant, which needs the firm's own check and the applicant's recorded consent.
- Never offer a format, an adjustment or a longer appointment the firm has not published as something it does.
- Never suggest documents be emailed instead when the firm's process deliberately routes payslips and statements somewhere else.
Questions
- Can it record the adjustment on the client's file?
- No. It writes nowhere. It takes a name, an email and a message to your nominated address, and a person has to put the note where it belongs. The material should say that in the answer rather than leaving the applicant to find out.
- Should health questions on the protection side be mentioned here?
- Mention that the conversation covers them, not what they are. Somebody deciding whether they can face a long call deserves to know the shape of it, and the detail belongs in the appointment with an adviser rather than on a page.
- Family members handle the paperwork on a lot of our cases. Is that a problem?
- It is only a problem when it is assumed. Publish what you need in order to have somebody authorised and the assistant can explain it in a sentence, which is far better than an adviser discovering mid call that the person talking is not the applicant.
Keep reading
- Everything for a mortgage brokerProcess, documents and fees are safe to automate. Rates go stale fast and affordability cannot be answered generically.
- Handling accessibility requests in generalTwo different things arrive as one message. A published accessibility statement answers the first. The second is a request, and it needs a person.
- An estate agency wants to know how the firm holds a client's paperworkIntroducers vet the firms they refer to. The questions are about payslips, statements and identity documents sitting together in one place.
- The cover a lender insists on, and the cover that is a second appointmentBuildings cover is a lender condition with a deadline. Life cover is a separate regulated sale. Neither gets advised on in a chat window.
- Money paid on a mortgage case that went nowhereA down valuation, a decline or a collapsed chain. Whether money comes back depends which fee it was and whether the firm ever held it.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.