Pivoting to needs of vulnerable customers

At The Mortgage Lender, we strive to ensure our processes are simple and straightforward when it comes to supporting people on their homeownership journey, particularly for those who may be in more vulnerable positions. But ensuring these vulnerable circumstances are identified and responded to appropriately can pose a challenge for the lending industry.

A recent case we worked on meant we had to slightly pivot our usual ways of working to support a neurodiverse applicant. As with any application, a full affordability assessment is undertaken, however, in this case we recognised the need to alter our process to lengthen the time the case was open, allowing the applicant time to respond.

Our underwriter on the case, Daniel Baguley, required further detail to verify the most recent income for one of the applicants, as they had recently made the switch from being a Sole Trader to a Limited Company Director prior to the application. This resulted in a gap in trading and reporting periods which required further information from the client's accountant to cover that gap. Although this led to a slight delay in the application, which was swiftly resolved by our team, we had allowed additional time to support the nature of the customer’s vulnerability.

We were pleased to then offer the applicant the full loan amount and product requested at the outset.

Sara Palmer, Distribution Director at The Mortgage Lender (TML), comments:

“We take pride in our commitment to helping real-life people get on the property ladder, and this includes those with vulnerabilities. This case highlighted the importance of our additional support process, allowing brokers to advise of any needs an applicant may have, which in turn enables our underwriting team to offer support from the start to the end of the application journey.

Careful consideration is given in understanding and identifying when additional support is needed, and so we are pleased we were able to assist this customer reach their desired outcome. Going forward, we want to continue to help our brokers in having a more open dialogue regarding vulnerabilities, and the ways in which we can continue supporting our customers to reach their property goals.”