How much do we charge for our mortgage and insurance advice service?

Mortgage advice fees

While it is true that we charge a fee for our mortgage advice service, there are good reasons for this. We are truly independent from any mortgage lender or other mortgage intermediary (i.e. we are not beholden to any other organisation or person for the work we do on your behalf, except to you and our regulators, the FSA), so we can give you our very best service without worrying if the lenders commission will cover the cost of giving that advice. 

Mortgage brokers who give 'free advice' or only charge a small amount and keep the lenders  commission are earning little or no income from you directly, so who are they actually working for? To maximise their income, a 'free' mortgage broker would need to find a lenders product which gave them the best commission. Would this product be the most suitable for you, or the mortgage broker? Also don't forget where this mortgage commission is ultimately coming from - your mortgage payments over the term of the mortgage! 

When we charge a fee, we pay back all the mortgage commission we earn from your case. This means we don't make any money from the mortgage lender, so we don't care what the commission levels are. We only work for you and, if appropriate, we can even recommend products which pay no commission. Can you imagine a 'free advice' broker recommending a 'no commission' product and doing the work for free?

Once we've identified the best mortgage product for your requirements, we then look for ways to maximise any commission we give back for you. Our fee structure is fully described, along with examples, in our 'Key facts about our Service' document. The examples show what fees a typical 'clean credit history' and  'adverse credit history' customer might pay net of commission. The examples show that is possible to receive more back in commission than the fees owed, although this depends on your specific circumstances and cannot be guaranteed.

What we can guarantee is that you will get a professional independent mortgage and insurance adviser giving you truly independent advice and working to get you the best mortgage and insurance deals in the market. So, why not gain independent professional mortgage advice, and get the commission back at the same time?

Why do we charge more for adverse cases? We have to do more work than with a clean case, to make sure we approach the right lenders to get you the best deal. If we don't do this properly, we may end up offering you a deal with a lender who will refuse to loan you the money. Not only would this be a set back in terms of not getting the funds you need, and the time and effort wasted, but you will find that your credit history is made even worse because of the new entry showing a refusal to lend. Getting a loan then becomes so much harder and more expensive.

Of course, there will be situations where things go wrong, where we have done our work, completed our end of the bargain successfully and in good faith and therefore expect to be paid. That's reasonable isn't it? Not many people are willing to go to work for a day without pay.

We appreciate there may be situations when something goes wrong and you have no choice but withdraw you offer to purchase (maybe the surveyor identifies major problems or the solicitor finds some insurmountable legal issue, for example). We appreciate that these kind of situations are beyond your control and are sympathetic to this. For full details of instances where we might make an administrative charge for a case which has received a lenders offer but failed to complete, see our 'Key facts about our Service' document.

Insurance advice fees

For insurance advice we do not charge a fee for arranging a non-investment general insurance contracts, but we will receive commission from the insurer. This means we cannot say we are truly independent in terms of our insurance advice, but the way insurers pays insurance commission means it's more difficult for us to return this money to you without a lot of extra administration work, and with the possibility that under certain circumstances you would have to return some of the commission you might have received, possibly years after you received it - a bit messy!

However, please be assured that we still act wholly on your behalf. We would much rather have a happy customer, who will continue to use our services in the future and recommend us to their friends and family, rather than try squeeze every last penny out of a deal.

For full details of instances where we may need to make an administrative charge for an insurance case, see our 'Key facts about our Service' document.

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