Liz Syms (interview) discusses increasing financial pressure on borrowers due to rising cost of living and higher interest rates, noting more customers are struggling. She stresses the advisor’s role in educating clients about specialist lending products and alternatives (including product transfers and Pepper’s range) and argues that strong regulation and advisor justification reduce the risk of mis-selling. She highlights common misconceptions (e.g., customers believing they cannot get a mortgage after a credit blip or recent self-employment) and urges advisors to proactively communicate available solutions.
Chapters
Foreign. So I think near prime boom might be a slight exaggeration, but I do think we are having more and more customers. It's expected to be honest, more and more customers are struggling a little bit, you know, with the cost of living increase, the rates increase, increase. You know, there, there are loads of things that are going to affect many customers and obviously the report, you know, highlights that. Is it a boom? No, I think it's, it's more a case of, you know, advisors being there to help those customers that are struggling with, with potential solutions that are out there in the marketplace. So I think this definitely sounds more education that can be done for customers out there. Those are two fairly straightforward products. So if there are lots of customers who don't understand that, then as an industry we are failing them by not helping them to understand that. Do I think that's likely to lead to miss selling? Probably not. We're a pretty highly regulated industry. Advisors do need to justify what they've done, why they've done it. And even though a product transfer is a quicker process, there is a temptation perhaps for advisors to go down that route because of the path of least resistance. You know, certainly networks like ourselves, we highly look at what those advisors have done, why they have done it, what's the reasons behind why that is the best solution for the customer and to justify that. So the advisor still has to do their full research, they're still giving advice to that customer and therefore that does minimize the risk of miss selling. With the kind of increased cost of living, people have obviously taken on more debt and that's going to affect their affordability at the end of the day. So advisors will have to help their customers to understand what sort of products might be out there that can help them where they're perhaps missing some of the mainstream opportunities because their debt to income ratio doesn't work. So it is an area that needs advice, that needs specialist guidance from an advisor who can help still use tools that can still help that customer. Educate your customers. That's the biggest one that you know what was really poignant for me is that customers think they can't get a mortgage. They think they can't get a mortgage because they've had a credit blip or they've just gone self employed and haven't got three years worth of account. There are products out there. Pepper clearly have a whole brilliant range of products that can help these customers. So make sure that you're speaking to your customers, you're letting them know that there are solutions for them.
