Playbook, mortgage broker
The upload link has stopped working and the case is waiting on it
The portal is not a convenience. It exists because a payslip and three months of bank statements should not travel through an inbox, which means somebody who cannot get into it has not been mildly inconvenienced, they have stopped the case. Most of these messages are one of three things: a link that has quietly expired, two applicants trying to share one login, or somebody who opened the portal expecting to find out what the lender has decided and found their own documents staring back.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for account access problems holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The portal exists precisely so that financial documents stay out of email, so being locked out of it blocks the case rather than annoying somebody, and the urgency in these messages is real.
- Joint applicants routinely try to work from a single login and then cannot tell whose documents landed where, which is a support pattern that barely exists on a service with one customer per case.
- Access links are usually issued against a case and expire, so somebody returning weeks later with a saved link is not locked out at all: the link has simply finished, and telling them that is a different answer from a reset.
- Clients open the portal expecting to see how the application is going and find only what they sent, and that disappointment, rather than the login, is what most of these messages are really about.
How it arrives
- my upload link has expired can i have another
- my partner and i are trying to use the same login
- i uploaded my payslips but they are not showing
- how do i get back into the document portal
- can i see how my application is going in there
- i have a new phone and cannot get in any more
What has to be indexed for this to work
| How portal access is issued, and how long it lasts | Whether a link is per case or per person, whether it expires and what somebody does when it has. Say the expiry out loud, because a client who thinks they are locked out and is actually holding a finished link asks the wrong question. |
|---|---|
| How joint applicants are set up | Whether each applicant gets their own access, what happens if they share, and how documents are attributed. Write it for the couple who already shared one, since that is who is asking. |
| What the portal shows and what it does not | That it holds documents sent to the firm and does not carry a lender's view of the case. This one sentence answers more of these messages than the access instructions do. |
| Who reissues access, and what they need | The route, and what to include so it can be dealt with in one go rather than three. Access requests are the messages most likely to bounce back and forth, and specifying what to send fixes that. |
The reply
Access links are issued against a case and they do expire, so a link saved a few weeks ago will often have finished rather than broken [1]. Where there are two of you, each applicant normally has their own access, which is why documents can look as though they have gone missing when they were uploaded under the other login [2]. It is also worth saying that the portal holds what you have sent us and does not show what the lender is doing with the application. I cannot reissue access, check whether an upload arrived or see anything on your case. Leave your name, your email and the property address and somebody will send a fresh link.
Naming expiry first reframes the problem for most of the people asking, who assume something is broken. The joint login explanation is placed second because it accounts for the missing documents without anybody having to describe the symptom. The sentence about what the portal does not show is included even though it was not asked, since it is the real question sitting underneath a lot of these.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor needs a link reissued, says an upload is missing, or asks whether a document the firm asked for has been received.
I cannot send a link or see whether anything arrived, so this needs somebody with the case in front of them. Leave your name, your email and the property address and they will sort the access out.
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 reset a login, reissue a link or say that one has been sent, since the assistant cannot write to anything and nothing follows from saying so.
- Never confirm that a document was received, that an upload succeeded, or that the firm has everything it needs.
- Never suggest sending payslips or bank statements by email instead, when the portal exists specifically to keep them out of one.
- Never describe the portal as showing progress on the application, because it holds the client's own documents and nothing from the lender.
Questions
- Can it send a new upload link if somebody asks?
- No. It cannot trigger anything, write to any system or send anything except the enquiry email to your address. It explains why a link stops working, which resolves the confusion, and the reissue is done by a person.
- Half of these turn out to be the other applicant's login. Worth publishing?
- Very much so, because the message that arrives says documents are missing rather than that two people are sharing an account. Publishing how joint access works lets the assistant offer the explanation before anybody has diagnosed it.
- Should the material say the portal does not show case progress?
- Yes, and it should say it in the answer rather than burying it. A client who logs in daily looking for a decision is generating a message a week, and one plain sentence about what the portal is for takes most of that away.
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 account access problems in generalLocked out, wrong email, a colleague who left, no admin remaining. Identity cannot be checked in a widget, so explain, collect, hand over.
- The question every applicant asks, and the one nothing here can seeThe most asked question on a broker's site is the one with no visible answer. Publish what each stage waits on instead of a status.
- The work between a first conversation and anything reaching a lenderThe fact find, the consent to a credit search and the document gather. A product transfer, a remortgage and a purchase run it at three lengths.
- What a broker charges, and what a lender charges, kept apartIndexed rate material is the fastest rotting content a broker can publish. How to answer what rate can i get without repeating last month's.
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.