ATOM mortgage overpayments- Does this sound right?

Poquito

Hi all, hope you can advise if this advice from Atom CS sounds right. My daughter is one year into her mortgage journey with them and I’m encouraging her to overpay a little each month. (Overpayments are permitted 10% a year) She phoned Atom and was advised that as her next monthly payment was due the following week that she would have to wait until May and then they can calculate things and advise how much she could pay. 

I thought this was odd as even many years ago when I had a mortgage with NatWest I was able to phone their mortgage centre and make a payment over the phone and there wasn’t any limitations on the proximity to the next mortgage payment.

Even with my current mortgage provider I can move money within the banking app and see it showing on my mortgage the next day… regardless of value or how many times I do this.

i was expecting them to provide as a minimum a s/c and a/c number (mtge no. as a reference ) to enable her to set up a regular payment option with her bank so she can make random overpayments whenever she likes (within her annual limit)

or

increase the dd… (least preferred/less control)

or have an option within the app where you can just make a bank transfer into the mortgage. (Like paying a cc balance)

It’s odd to me that in the section on their app that refers to overpayments the first instruction is to phone them! 

Could you kindly advise/ shed some light as to why a mortgage provider would prevent you from setting up overpayments immediately and make you wait until your next payment… when the interest is accruing every day on hundreds of thousands of pounds they are delaying us… which feels unfair.

Does this advice sound right?

btw… the call was on speaker and I heard the conversation verbatim, it wasn’t retold to me by my daughter. I didn’t interrupt or challenge at the time as I wanted to process the information. Just made me think… ummm that doesn’t sound right to me.

any thoughts please.

thanks all.
Po.

Hoenir

Relatively small lender that isn't a mainstream banking operation. Direct debits are set 10 days in advance of the payment date. Perhaps it's the way they operate. Ad-hoc payments requiring additional administration. Amending the direct debit and ensuring overpayments will be within the annual allowance seems a reasonable way of approaching the matter. 

Poquito

Hoenir said:

Relatively small lender that isn't a mainstream banking operation. Direct debits are set 10 days in advance of the payment date. Perhaps it's the way they operate. Ad-hoc payments requiring additional administration. Amending the direct debit and ensuring overpayments will be within the annual allowance seems a reasonable way of approaching the matter. 

Thanks for your reply. We will probably have to go with amending the DD. The overpayments wouldn’t have been anywhere near the annual allowance, we had been discussing little and often payments to get in the habit… amounts she won’t miss, still encouraging her to have fun and live her life. 

We can always get those overpayments she would have made into a regular saver and at the end of each year… pay onto the mortgage as a lump sum…

thanks again for your reply.

Po