Brokers: lenders need to address staffing issues

Brokers are venting their frustration about staffing issues in the underwriting departments – at both monoline lenders and banks – and they believe it’s an issue that needs to be addressed to gain greater efficiencies and ensure client retention.

Brokers are venting their frustration about staffing issues in the underwriting departments – at both monoline lenders and banks – and they believe it’s an issue that needs to be addressed to gain greater efficiencies and ensure client retention.

“It seems to me there is a consistent underlying problem being staffing, and by some of the tones of underwriter responses both verbal and written, they are overworked,” James, a commenter on MortgageBrokerNews.ca recently wrote.

The comment was in response to a story about the shared responsibility of both lenders and brokers to ensure expeditious deals.

“If brokers would actually put notes in their apps that make sense and stop sending deals to three or four lenders at the same time, it would likely improve service levels,” one frustrated professional at a broker channel lender recently wrote.

And brokers are more than willing to share the blame, it seems.

“As Brokers we need to make sure in our capacity we step up to make intelligent submissions supported by clear and complete notes as the first step to mitigate, but we all need to make a stronger effort on both the underwriting and submission side,” the commenter James wrote.

Still, he believes lender staffing issues need to be addressed to maximize the potential of broker channel lenders.

“I appreciate the necessity of clean files and substantial notes to maximize efficiency for underwriters and so I work to provide this,” he wrote. “I do however get multiple excuses for extremely slow turnaround times on approvals and document review where the common theme is ... ‘We have gone through a turnover of underwriters and this is quite normal for this time of year.’”