How we operate
How we operate
You contact us
You contact us by email or phone. (If you contact us by email, we then phone you.) As part of the phone call, we ask you a few questions to get a general sense of your financial position.
After talking to you, we send you an email summarising what you told us over the phone and confirming the time and place of our meeting.
We meet with you
You don't need to bring any documents. However, you can bring any that you wish to show us.
We start by confirming the information you gave us over the phone. Then outline a few things about the way we are paid. We let you know that we are paid a commission by the lenders. You don't pay us anything. We also let you know that we are not biased toward any lender. Our commission is almost the same, regardless what lender we use, provided we use one of the “big 12”. It means that you wouldn't save any money by approaching the lenders yourself, because they simply take the commission that they would have paid us.
After these preliminaries, we use our computer database and experience to run scenarios for different loans that may suit your circumstances. By the end of the meeting, we normally will have worked out a possible loan structure for you.
We give you a list of documents that you'll need to get for us. We also give you a standard fact-finding questionnaire and ask you to fill it out and return it to us when we next meet. The questionnaire gives us a sense of your financial objectives and how they match your life circumstances. We are required by law to ask these questions in order to make sure we're encouraging responsible lending.
You gather the required documentation
You can do this at your own pace. When we get your documentation, we review it and analyse it. We take your costs into account, as well as behind-the-scenes factors. For example, some lenders are very sensitive about a record of late payments on a credit card, even small amounts. So it's a waste of time to go through an extensive application process to them, if credit-card problems happen to apply to you. Our experience with the lenders can save you trouble and time.
We recommend a loan package, prepare a recommendation document for you, as well as the application forms.
We meet with you again
We explain our recommendations. And the application form is ready for you. All you need to do is read through it, check that everything is right, and sign it.
If you would rather think about it and get back to us later, that's no problem. Or you may prefer to take up an alternative package from our analysis. If so, we will prepare the application for that and let you know when it's ready for you to sign.
We submit the loan application for you
When you have signed the application form, we handle the electronic application process. After that we monitor the application to make sure it goes through smoothly.
We continue to help you after the loan is approved
When the lender finishes processing your application, they may give you a conditional approval. For example, the loan may be conditional on the property being valued. In that case, we'll make sure the valuer has been appointed and can access the property.
After an unconditional approval is issued, we review it and make sure it's consistent with your application. Then we meet with you, go through the documents, and have you sign them.
We then submit the completed and signed application to the lender. After they process it, your loan settlement is ready.
We handle the settlement for you. For example, with a new property, you need to have four people appear at the same meeting: the settlement agents for the buyer and for the seller, and lender representatives for the buyer and seller. We make sure it all happens as required. You don't need to be there.
That's it. All done. We look after you at every stage.
If there is any part of the process you feel unsure about please don’t hesitate to contact us. We are here to make this process as simple as possible for you. We are here to guide you. Every mortgage and every person is different so you should feel comfortable asking questions at any stage. Our job is to make this process easy.
