Why Are Our Services Free?

Firstly, it’s because we are pretty awesome

We are financial matchmakers, the qupids of money, the guardians of great advice.

We certainly could charge customers for our service, and have been offered by many firms over the years a partnership to introduce this kind of approach. But it’s just not us.

At OMA we really believe in our ability to get the best outcome for our customers, and as we are changing and improving the industry we prefer attracting a wider audience to do this at scale, rather than helping just those willing to pay for it.

Customers come to us because they need help, and it’s our mission to make sure everyone gets it.

A snapshot of how the market works

Customers can either go directly to a lender on their own, or a broker can do all the work for them. What many people don’t know is that almost 35% of lenders in the market will only deal with experts (not the public), so to ensure you get the best deal statistically you really need a broker. This is even more true when it comes to specialist mortgages, where in some instances you can only get a mortgage with an expert advisor.

If you do use an advisor, the industry works with lenders paying them for the time involved in making a successful application, and setting up a new mortgage – There’s a lot of expertise, due diligence, research, admin, compliance, and monitoring involved to ensure the advisor gets it right – You’d be surprised at how much, given the regulation and requirements from the FCA to protect consumers – it’s not quite as simple as checking a box accepting terms and conditions!

A typical lender will pay 0.35% of the loan amount (so £350 on a £100k mortgage). When you factor in the work involved and the associated business costs spread over weeks / months, these payments don’t actually go that far!

What are OMA getting out of it then?

Simply put, your advisor will pay us. Kind of like a “refer a friend” scheme, done professionally – you enquire, we become friends, and we refer you! Advisors pay us a small membership fee and then a cost per customer to be involved with us.

Will my advisor charge a fee if OMA isn’t?

Quite possibly – some do, some don’t. It all depends on the nature of your enquiry and how complex / time consuming the application might be. Lenders pay the same whether your mortgage is straightforward or takes months, so expert brokers tend to charge fees to cover the additional time – All very standard practice and to be expected for anyone thinking about using an advisor.

All advisors must adhere to our fair fee policy, meaning they have strict limits on what they can charge and have to refund everything if they don’t get your mortgage approved. 

There’s a lot of value in making sure you work with the right broker, so don’t be fooled just because someone promises to do something for free. But of course if you can get the exact same thing without paying for it, then great! 

Why should I use an OMA advisor?

Remember – and we mean this seriously – Not all advisors are created equal.

We see it all the time, a customer comes to us having been declined by a “whole of market broker” who can’t find them a lender, we introduce them to the right expert in our network and hey-presto, it’s approved.

A big worry we have is for the people not coming to us – those who end up with a random advisor who places their mortgage with the wrong lender, when another could have done it cheaper, quicker, with less deposit so they don’t have to borrow from mum and dad, or on the dream house they would have wanted but were told they couldn’t afford… there’s endless examples.

Please don’t let that be you!
There are almost as many different sorts of brokers as there are mortgages:

So there are:

• Bad Credit brokers
• Buy to Let brokers
• Self-employed brokers
• Commercial mortgage brokers
• Bridging loan brokers
• Overseas mortgage brokers
• Second charge brokers
• Shared ownership brokers
• Expat brokers
• And more!

All the brokers we work with have to complete the demanding 25 module Online Mortgage Advisor course and, as they say in the Bond movies, we do not tolerate failure. So if there’s one thing that sets the advisors we work with apart from the rest … it’s that they are geared up for success, which is good for you … and good for us.

All the brokers we work with are FCA regulated, and have to pass our demanding 25 module Expert Advisor course, as well as undergo constant management, checks, measures, mystery shopping and customer service calls – as they say in the Bond movies, we do not tolerate failure. So if there’s one thing that sets the advisors we work with apart from the rest … it’s that they are geared up for success.

Why do advisors need OMA?

We’ve been the leading introducer to many brokers for 10+ years now, because they love what we do and we are a great source of customers to help their businesses grow.

It is standard practice for firms to pay companies that give them customers – who are generally known as “introducers” – as a way of attracting customers without directly marketing themselves.

We are firm believers in people and businesses playing their role, and everyone doing what they do to the best of their ability. A lot of our mortgage firms are AMAZING at mortgages, like literally the best in the industry, and at the same time (probably because they are so focussed on mortgages) aren’t all that great at attracting new customers.

Well we do that bit for them, and we’re really good at it.

Pete our MD talks about this as “having your strikers upfront and your keeper in net, not the other way around”.

We’ve spent a decade refining who we work with, finding the best experts in the UK (and the world) to make sure our customers have a better experience and a higher chance of approval than anywhere else.

It’s such a good network of experts that we want them to stay there doing what they do! The minute they start watching youtube videos learning how to build a website, write engaging articles, code calculators, or take journalists out to lunch – that’s all time they should be spending doing what they love, and what they do best – helping customers.

Marketing costs money, loads of it. We spend millions on this side of our business, and have an incredible team helping us be the voice of the industry to make sure more customers find us and get the right help, rather than ending up with a less experienced advisor and having to compromise on their plans / get declined unnecessarily.

It’s not simple or cheap to recreate (many try!), and whilst we continue to dominate the top of the search engines for mortgages (and money with our other brand OnlineMoneyAdvisor), our partner firms gratefully don’t need to make that level of investment to benefit from what we do.

Advisors love us!

We also create an incredible opportunity for specialist advisors, as we absorb all the expense of marketing, research, development, and distribution, allowing them to work with many grateful customers happy to work with them, with no upfront charge. We are proud to say that this has led to the growth of the specialist mortgage market and to the size and scale of many specialist advice firms across the UK, now working with over 40 firms and 150 advisors.