Lenders experiencing processing delays due to high demand

Barclays and Nationwide Building Society are both experiencing delays in processing applications due to demand for their mortgages. A story on Mortgage Strategy's website highlights that Nationwide's heightened demand for fixed-rate products is creating delays. Aaron Strutt, a broker at Trinity Financial, says: “Many of the mortgage lenders are lowering their rates and they are struggling to stick to their more normal processing times. “We constantly monitor the lenders service times and if one of our clients' needs a fast mortgage offer, we place them with the lender with the most competitively priced mortgages and efficient processing times.” Nationwide's service level agreement includes a processing period of 14 days but only 50 per cent of applications have been processed since July 9. The average processing period has since risen to 17 days. Barclays are also running above their service agreement of five days and have delays of up to seven days for house purchase applications. July 26, 2012