Knowledge Bank has improved its ‘evidence of research’ facility to give brokers the tools to evidence their research with what the lender has declared their criteria to be at a particular moment in time.
These findings will be time and date stamped and the broker will be able to be save them to PDF and add them to a CRM system or print them out and add them to the client’s file.
A broker will now also be able to personalise their results, not only with their name and company, but also with the client’s name and address, details of the property amount, the loan amount and term and the repayment method. It will also record the ‘criteria considerations that assisted the reason for recommendation’, with an area for a broker to record their reasons for recommending a particular lender.
In the event of a complaint from a client questioning their choice of lender, a broker is reliant on any notes they made on the client’s Fact Find and in their Suitability Letter, but without printing out pages from lenders’ websites or recording all telephone calls, until now there has been no way that they could evidence this research was actually carried out.
Nicola Firth, CEO of Knowledge Bank, said: “Knowledge Bank is providing the missing piece of the jigsaw where evidence of research is concerned. The FCA requires brokers to provide evidence of research for their recommendations to their clients, but until now this has not been entirely possible.
“Up until this point, the industry has taken evidence of research to mean ‘save product sourcing results’. When cases were placed based on product alone this was indeed the most important element, but criteria is now so vital to lenders, that many borrowers do not qualify for the product which is at the top of the product sourcing results. Instead a wider search needs to be done and a broker needs to justify why they have recommended a loan which may be more expensive.
“Knowledge Bank’s enhanced evidence of criteria provides watertight evidence of what criteria was searched for and why a particular product was chosen for a client. This is the first time that this has ever been available anywhere in the market.”
Philip Smith, compliance manager, First Mortgage (NE), added: “Knowledge Bank has helped me greatly when undertaking file checks particularly as to why certain lenders have been recommended, especially if they do not feature particularly well in the traditional product sourcing systems. The fact that advisers are able to supplement their traditional research with documented evidence of criteria driven research is of great benefit.
“More importantly our clients receive a better experience as a result, as we are now able to identify with greater certainty the lender most likely to be able to assist and thus save vital time no longer applying to the wrong lender in the first instance.”