So much more behind the scenes!

I am delighted to commence this week’s column with the fantastic news that AToM has received another national mortgage industry award! We have been voted the ‘Best Mortgage Packager’ by MYIntroducer.com 2010. These awards are amongst the only ones in the industry truly determined by customer votes. Most awards have a panel of judges who vet and nominate. This is our second award for 2010 already having received the ‘Treating Customers Fairly’ accolade from the Mortgage Finance Gazette. We have a super team at AToM and this award is real credit to the hard work the staff have put in during the recent tough market conditions.

As a Mortgage Packager, AToM sticks out from the crowd somewhat. A Mortgage Packager not only works with the general public, but nationally too with many Accountants, Mortgage Brokers, Independent Financial Advisers and Estate Agents. As a Mortgage Packager, with over 10,000 registered introducers on our databases, lenders use AToM to offer their mortgage products seeking quick distribution and marketing to all of the above. This often means that we see exclusive deals, new lenders and product innovations, ahead of the general marketplace. As a Mortgage Packager, we also collate information for the lenders, obtain employer or accountant references, instruct valuations, obtain mortgage offers and in some cases go right through to requesting funds and instructing completions.

Some of these lenders will work through limited distributions, enabling them to control their business volumes. In other words, it’s up to AToM to identify the cases that may, or may not, fit the lenders criteria quickly and direct them accordingly. As a result, lenders may not need to employ as many staff to man the phones or underwrite cases. Thus containing their costs. Some lenders choose to distribute through just nine sources, of which, thankfully, AToM are one. Others will use preferred Mortgage Packagers to distribute specific tranches of their products, and so on.

So in short, we are a little bit like Doctor Who’s Tardis. The AToM shop front opens onto a business which has much, much more going on behind the scenes!