Mortgage Advice
- Description
- Tasks
- Skills
- Useful Knowledge
- Entry Qualifications
- Professional Qualifications
- Trends
- Resources
To be able to buy a property, most people arrange a mortgage. It’s important that people understand all their options and have considered how much they can afford to borrow and how much they can afford to repay each month. Mortgage advice professionals work with the client to explain the products, analyse their financial situation, recommend an appropriate product and support them in making an application for a mortgage. This role may also involve selling insurance alongside the new loan, including life assurance, income protection and building and contents insurance.
Salary
Trainee positions start at approximately £15,000 per annum. With the right experience, qualifications and skills you could progress to management roles and earn in excess of £70,000 per annum. This does not include potential bonuses and additional benefits. Salaries will vary considerably based on location and employer.
- Generating leads and engaging clients to gather financial information in order to understand fully their financial and mortgage needs
- Preparing financial statements to understand the client’s current situation and inform recommendations
- Analysing each client’s financial circumstances
- Researching and selecting appropriate mortgage products and solutions within the market
- Preparing clear recommendations, advising clients on the most appropriate solutions and agreeing the next steps
- Properly implementing the chosen mortgage product, responding to queries and processing applications
- Constantly striving to meet performance targets, personal development and maintaining up-to-date knowledge of industry, compliance and regulatory developments
- Networking and developing productive working relationships with mortgage lenders and retaining and generating new business clients
- Excellent people, interpersonal and listening skills, to build client trust
- Confidence preparing and explaining numbers
- Ability to learn and understand technical and financial information
- Professional, ethical and discreet
- Customer service skills
- Strong negotiation and influencing skills
- Initiative and problem solving, with lateral thinking
- Organisation and diligence
- Flexibility
Employers usually provide training to acquire skills for:
- An understanding of the financial services industry and the mortgage marketplace
- An understanding of mortgage products, the housing market history and future trends would be beneficial
- Acting ethically, impartially and always in the interests of clients and meeting the FSA’s Treating Customer’s Fairly requirements
Giving mortgage advice is an FSA regulated function. This means that to do this role unsupervised specific Appropriate Qualifications are required. At trainee level, an employer will often provide internal training and support the employee in gaining the qualification. Although there are no formal qualifications required to enter these courses, maths and English skills will be useful.
The minimum qualifications required to deliver mortgage advice include:
- Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) Level 3 Certificate in Mortgage Advice (CertMA)
- Chartered Banker Institute Mortgage Advice and Practice Certificate (MAPC)
- Institute of Financial Services Level 3 Certificate in Mortgage Advice and Practice (CeMAP)
- Level 3 Advanced Apprenticeship in Providing Mortgage Advice, in England and Wales.
Mortgage advisers can extend into advising clients on equity release products (both home reversion plans and lifetime mortgages). This is also an FSA regulated function and therefore a further Appropriate Qualifications is necessary. There are three options:
- CII Level 3 Certificate in Equity Release
- Chartered Banker Institute Mortgage Advice and Practice Certificate (Equity Release) –MAPC(ER)
- Institute of Financial Services Level 3 Certificate in Regulated Equity Release (CeRER)
These qualifications meet the Financial Services Authority (FSA) full qualification requirements up to and after 1 January 2013. Please contact the FSA on 0845 606 9966.
The Institute of Financial Services also offers the
- Level 4 Diploma in Mortgage Advice and Practice (DipMAP)
If a mortgage adviser also wants to provide broader financial advice or advise on long-term care products, additional Appropriate Examinations will be required as these are regulated functions. Please refer to the profile relating to Financial Advice and Planning for more details.
You might work for a brokerage company, estate agency, bank or building society. There are also opportunities to be self-employed. Opportunities are nationwide. Larger clusters of mortgage advice firms are typically in locations where property prices are higher. Depending on the company and clients you work for there could be opportunities to work internationally, either assisting overseas clients with mortgages for UK property or assisting UK residents with overseas property investments.
