Woolwich’s B2L system crashes
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Woolwich’s back office system for processing buy-to-let cases has crashed.
The lender says it is working on fixing the problem and has advised brokers to hold off submitting cases for the next couple of days.
The system is currently only processing completions and critical cases.
A spokeswoman for the lender says the fault is technical and not due to large business volumes.
In November the lender had to withdraw its tracker and fixed rate buy-to-let 75% LTV deals through the broker channel in order to manage service levels.
It also temporarily increased its service-level agreement for initial case assessments in order to manage expectations.
Its timeline to make an initial case assessment has temporarily increased to fourteen working days.
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Readers' comments (13)
Anonymous | 4 Jan 2012 12:22 pm
Absolute joke! They were currently 14 days behind anyway and yet still had their doors open to branch applications. It was even taking them 14 days to assess a valuation when it was received even after waiting two weeks for the initial assessment of a case.
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Anonymous | 4 Jan 2012 12:26 pm
6-7 days? more like 3-4 weeks, plus current turnaround is still terrible at 15 days. they are unbelievably amatuer
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Dan McGeehan | 4 Jan 2012 12:31 pm
Just try switching it off and back on again!
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Anonymous | 4 Jan 2012 12:38 pm
I have had a miserable experience with a Woolwich BTL application.
On reflection I should not have used them, shame they were offering what appeared to be a good deal at the time and now clearly isnt.
From a broker's point of view they have harmed my business and caused a lot of problems for clients.
I wont be using them again. I suggest any broker thinks twice about submitting an application until they have announced service level expectations which you can work with.
I dont think they get it at the Woolwich/Barclays, they treat us brokers very badly.
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Anonymous | 4 Jan 2012 1:20 pm
I simply cannot understand how this lender continues to get it wrong for so long. Other lenders have come into the marketplace and got it right (Precise/Aldermore)maybe the head of lending should get out of his ivory tower and visit these other companies to get some idea's on how it should be done. Please dont insult anyones intelligence and say its down to volume systems are systems and should be scaleable.
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Anonymous | 4 Jan 2012 2:40 pm
To be fair "A (Barclays) spokeswoman says the fault is technical and not due to large business volumes."
So I guess they're not insulting anyones intelligence..you're just misreading the very short article...
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seagull | 4 Jan 2012 3:20 pm
Re: Anonymous | 4 Jan 2012 2:40 pm
Surely there is nobody left that would believe "A Barclays spokeswoman" or anybody that speaks for any High Street Bank man, woman or child?!
They seem to find it impossible to speak openly, you need to speak to staff very much further down the train of command before you get anywhere close to the truth about the poor management of all the High Street Bank's.
In this specific case, I had a call from the Residential mortgages office as they are looking at some of the buy to let applications to try to help out and I was told that Dartford were struggling even before the 75% deals came out and everyone who worked there knew it would create chaos but nobody further up the line listened, why should they worry about their staff or their customers when there are shareholders to answer to.
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Anonymous | 4 Jan 2012 3:57 pm
INTERNET PLATFORM CORPORATION
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LAURIE | 4 Jan 2012 4:47 pm
In response to the above (2.40)if you think fourteen days to assess a case is acceptable I can only assume you work for Barclays. Any company can have a system failure but they continually come up with excuses for their poor management and inconsistant processing and thats whats insulting peoples intelligence. This isnt a recent issue this has been going on for years.
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James Lindon-Travers | 4 Jan 2012 6:32 pm
I have a case that needs to complete on Friday - the offer is due to expire the day after so it's squeaky bottom time and I am told there is no way the case can be looked at manually. I seem to recall Mr Finlay wants to quadruple BTL lending in 2012. Not a good start to the New Year and with the Mortgage Strategy Awards fast approaching Woolwich/Barclays may not get their annual award. Oh dear, what a pity, never mind!
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