Halifax has upgraded its vulnerable customer advice service to allow brokers to pass on details about clients who may need help managing their home loans.
The country’s largest lender says it has “introduced a simple process” for brokers “to advise us if a customer requires additional support, whether they are a new or existing customer”.
The move follows the Financial Conduct Authority’s Consumer Duty rules launch at the end of last month.
The regulator’s new guidance applies to all of the UK’s 60,000 regulated financial firms, including the mortgage industry’s roughly 100 lenders and 18,000 brokers and broker firms.
It says the wide-ranging rules set out “higher and clearer standards of consumer protection across financial services”.
The lender says if intermediaries need to inform it of “a customer’s additional support requirements due to vulnerable circumstances”, they should call the firm’s new business intermediary team, between Monday and Friday from 8am to 6pm.
Brokers will be asked to provide:
- The customer’s mortgage roll number
- The customer’s name
- Your name and contact number
The lender says a time will then be arranged for a member of its vulnerability team to call the broker back to discuss the matter further, before the close of business of the next working day.
The firm adds that brokers must have asked “the customer’s permission to record and share this information with us so we can support them in the future”.
