It's the start of a new week and the early days of April.

I haven't yet achieved my goal for this month of 10 interviews in the diary for the month, and so today and tomorrow are about appointment setting for me.  It's quite easy at the moment as the 9th of April is the last day of St George's No-Deposit product and so I'm simply following up on all of the potential first home buyers I've spoken to over the last few months and letting them know that if they don't get in the system now then they'll have to start saving.

I'm also taking the time to contact my real estate agent, solicitor and accountant contacts to let them know of these changes in the lending landscape.  They appreciate the contact and the update and sometimes they have potential clients who they know will need to act upon this information.

I'm still very bogged down at the moment with a lot of follow up work from the previous two months with some of the loan files being into their 6th week with the lenders.  One of the key problems I'm having with a couple of lenders is communication.

Most lenders have online tracking systems now so that you can see the file notes and see what is happening with your loan file.  The problem is that some lenders will simply post a comment on these tracking systems requesting further information, however the process to supply that further information involves sending a fax off to a centralised area where sometimes two days later the lender receives it.  A recent example of this is one lender who posted the question, will this credit card be paid out before or at settlement?  Now that question required a one word answer, however the first I read about it was on the lenders tracking system, then that particular lender doesn't provide the contact details for their lenders so you can't call or email them to advise them the answer.  So, after sending through a very short fax a total of 4 working days had elapsed. 

Give the BDM's feedback when this type of inefficiency occurs as, particularly in times like this when turnaround times are extended, this sort of thing can impact your customers.