Mortgage Lenders and Brokers Editing and Proofreading Services

A mortgage is the largest financial commitment most people make and the one they understand least well at the moment of signing. Buyers are managing a chain, a solicitor, a survey and a moving date; the mortgage paperwork arrives in the middle of that and is read, at best, quickly. The documents that matter most are therefore the ones that anticipate what the borrower will need to know later — when the fixed rate ends, when rates move, when their circumstances change — because that is when they will actually read them.

We edit what lenders, brokers and intermediaries produce — mortgage illustrations and offer documents, product terms and tariff of charges, affordability and stress test explanations, application and documentation request communications, valuation and survey result letters, decline and downsize communications, fixed rate expiry and product transfer notices, rate change notifications for variable products, arrears and forbearance correspondence, repossession process communications, broker suitability reports and recommendation letters, lending criteria documents for intermediaries, and buy-to-let and specialist lending documentation. Our editors check that the cost of the product over its real life is capable of being understood from the documents, and that the follow-on rate is as visible as the headline one.

The fixed rate expiry notice is the single highest-value letter in mortgage lending, and most lenders write it as an administrative reminder. A borrower coming off a five-year fix has usually forgotten what their reversion rate is, may not know a product transfer is available without a full application, and will not act until the payment changes — at which point they are on the standard variable rate and paying for it. We rewrite these so the letter opens with both numbers side by side: what they pay now and what they will pay from the expiry date if they do nothing, in pounds per month, not percentages. Then the date by which they must act, then the options in order of effort, including the option to move to another lender, which the letter should acknowledge rather than pretend does not exist. Lenders who write this letter properly retain more customers than those who write it as a compliance obligation, because a borrower who feels warned rather than harvested tends to stay.

Everything you send is treated in strict confidence, including customer correspondence, criteria and material in draft. We are editors rather than advisers or compliance professionals, and mortgage communications must be approved by your compliance function. What we can do is make them clear, timely in emphasis and genuinely useful to the borrower reading them.