Brokers have been fighting a battle to ensure that lenders do not leave ‘footprints’ on consumers’ records and it could damage their credit ratings. The Council of Mortgage Lenders are calling for all lenders to make absolutely sure that consumers are making an application and not just shopping around.
This may mean that the systems that companies have in place are examined to make sure that they accurately record the information and allocate it to the correct field. The Council of Mortgage Lenders are also asking brokers and lenders include a question in all applications to determine if it is an application or enquiry.
Our view
This is a very difficult topic. Lenders leave credit search history all over a clients record when they ‘score’ a potential mortgage application. In the past we have even had to turn clients away, despite being able to potentially offer a better deal, because they had been elsewhere first to get a mortgage offer and a number of credit search footprints had been left meaning they may have been declined by our better deal because their credit history would show too many credit ‘footprints’.