What is Openwork? (in relation to mortgages)

kingstreet

Visiting some outlets which represent only a single life office, the customer will;-

- pay a fee for mortgage advice and/or arrangement

and

- get a mortgage product from only a small panel of lenders where a procuration fee is paid to the outlet and not be given details of direct to lender products

and

- have access to the products of only one life office

and

- be expected to pay a fee to reimburse the outlet for its lost life commission if the customer cancels the life policy within 4 years of inception.

This is the practice of many tied sales reps.

Openwork, of course, does not operate a panel and offers whole market mortgage advice and a panel of life assurers.

jonathanmiller

dunstonh wrote: »

If you do a forum search you will see that the reclaiming of commission has appeared more than once for them.



Rubbish. Thats just sales talk. You are not an openwork sales rep by any chance?

That's coming from lenders BDMs. They tend to have more issues with the single DA adviser and prefer dealing with the networks (inc IFA networks)

Also, the Openwork proposition isn't single-tied.

And thanks for the patronising 'sales rep' comment

dunstonh

Also, the Openwork proposition isn't single-tied.

No. Its multi-tie which makes it inferior to both whole of market and independent.

And thanks for the patronising 'sales rep' comment

Its not patronising. Its the general term for those appointed reps to an insurer. The fact is that no matter how nice a person you may be, you cannot give best advice to a client if you are tied to a limited number of insurers/providers. Also, under FSA authorisations tied and multi-tied do not represent the client. They represent the insurance company. Only independents represent the client. So, the use of sales rep is correct.

I have nothing against tied agents. Everyone has to start their career somewhere and salesforces/tied reps are a good place to do that. You can then move on to bigger and better once you become more experienced. However, in the context of this site, the use of a tied/multi-tied rep is an an inferior option.

blueberrypie

jonathanmiller wrote: »

And thanks for the patronising 'sales rep' comment

It wasn't a comment, it was a question. And you didn't answer it.

kingstreet

jonathanmiller wrote: »

Also, the Openwork proposition isn't single-tied

I wasn't talking about Openwork specifically, but I've made a correction so there's no confusion.

On the subject of exclusive deals, independents get to use the exclusives of the likes of L&G Mortgage Club, so we might be small individually, but our overall buying power is huge.

jonathanmiller

kingstreet wrote: »

I wasn't talking about Openwork specifically, but I've made a correction so there's no confusion.

On the subject of exclusive deals, independents get to use the exclusives of the likes of L&G Mortgage Club, so we might be small individually, but our overall buying power is huge.

Fully agree with that. L&G was the biggest last year IIRC.

saverjustice

Don't listen to any of these on here, they sound more scary every time I venture onto this site which is a shame, the forum has huge potential...

jamesd

kingstreet wrote: »

Openwork, of course, does not operate a panel and offers whole market mortgage advice

Does it offer "whole market" or FSA defined "whole of market" mortgage advice?

One easy test for whole market advice: whether direct to consumer deals introduced a day earlier will be recommended if they are best for the specific customer. If the answer is no it's not whole market advice. Possibly whole of market that may miss recent changes due to insufficiently frequent updating of panels or possibly excluding all of the direct to consumer deals.

kingstreet

jamesd wrote: »

Does it offer "whole market" or FSA defined "whole of market" mortgage advice?

One easy test for whole market advice: whether direct to consumer deals introduced a day earlier will be recommended if they are best for the specific customer. If the answer is no it's not whole market advice. Possibly whole of market that may miss recent changes due to insufficiently frequent updating of panels or possibly excluding all of the direct to consumer deals.

Mr Miller?

jamesd

Is Mr Miller anyone I should know?