Mortgage broker case notes best practice

Case notes are the cheapest thing in a brokerage to do well and the most expensive thing to have done badly. They cost two minutes at the time. They cost hours, and occasionally a great deal more, when a case has to be explained eighteen months later by somebody who was not in the room.

Most guidance on notes is about what to include. The more useful angle is about how they are written, because the failure mode is almost never omission. It is vagueness.

The difference between a record and a note

A record says something happened. "Spoke to client." "Called lender." "Documents chased."

A note says what happened, in enough detail to be useful. "Client rang, worried about the valuation being lower than the agreed price. Explained what a down valuation would mean for the deposit and that we would not know until the report reaches the lender. She asked whether she could pull out; I said that is a question for the conveyancer and offered to speak again once we hear. Agreed I would call Thursday."

The second one takes ninety seconds to write. It also does the whole job: it shows what the client was worried about, what they were told, what they were not told, and what was agreed.

Write the why, not just the what

The single most common gap in broker files is the reasoning. The recommendation is there. The reason it was right for this particular client, as opposed to any client, is not.

A weak reason names a feature. "Two-year fixed selected as client wanted certainty."

A strong reason connects the feature to something specific about the client. "Client is a contractor with a rolling twelve-month contract renewed twice and expects to renegotiate his rate next year. He wanted payment certainty for now but did not want to be locked in beyond the point where his income position becomes clearer. Discussed a five-year fix and he rejected it for that reason. Two-year fix selected on that basis, with early repayment charges explained."

Notice what that does. It records an alternative that was considered and rejected, with the client's own reasoning attached. That is the part that survives scrutiny.

Record the client's words where they matter

Paraphrasing loses the thing that made a moment significant. Where a client says something that changes the case, use their phrasing.

"He said his mother has just moved in with them and he is not sure how long that will last." That tells any future reader more about the household and the case than a tidy summary would.

The same applies to concerns and objections. A client who says the fee feels like a lot, and is then talked through it, has been through an exchange worth recording precisely.

Facts, not conclusions, when it comes to people

Where you are recording something about a client's circumstances, particularly anything sensitive, write what you observed or were told rather than your interpretation of it.

Not: client appeared confused and may lack capacity.

Instead: client asked me to repeat the explanation of the early repayment charge three times and said afterwards she found the numbers hard to follow. Offered to send a written summary and to speak again with her son present, which she accepted.

The second version is more useful, more respectful, and considerably more defensible. It also records what was done about it, which is the part that shows the client was actually supported.

Timing and attribution

A note written the same day is evidence. A note written three weeks later is a recollection, and everyone reading it knows the difference.

Write during or immediately after the call. If that is genuinely impossible, write it later but say so in the note, with the date it was written. Never backdate anything, and never edit an old note to say something different from what it originally said; add a new one instead.

Every note needs a named author. Shared logins destroy this, and they are worth eliminating for this reason alone.

What to note beyond conversations

• Decisions taken internally, with who took them.
• Instructions given by the client, especially where they run against your advice.
• Anything you told the client that they might reasonably rely on.
• Attempts at contact that failed, since a pattern of unanswered calls is itself relevant.
• Information received from third parties, with the source.
• Anything you decided not to do, where it was a real decision rather than an absence.

Habits that keep notes usable

Put the important thing first. Notes are skimmed, not read. If the case has a complication, the first line should say so.

Keep one convention for dates and figures across the firm. Mixed formats cause real confusion when a case is picked up cold.

Avoid internal shorthand that will not survive the person who invented it. Abbreviations are fine if they are on a list somewhere; personal ones are not.

Do not write anything you would be uncomfortable for the client to read. Clients can request the personal data you hold about them, and a sarcastic aside in a file has ended careers. Write as though the note will be read aloud, because occasionally it is.

Never put a note in a private place. A note in your own inbox, phone or notebook is not in the file, and for every purpose that matters it does not exist.

Testing your firm's notes

Pull five cases at random, hand them to someone who did not work on them, and ask them to summarise what was advised and why. Where they cannot, the note quality is the reason, not their ability.

Do it with cases from different advisers and you will find that note quality varies far more between individuals than most principals expect. It is one of the easiest things to improve with direct feedback, because the person can usually see the gap immediately once it is pointed out.

The regulatory framing

What your firm is required to record, and for how long, is set out in the FCA Handbook and, if you are an appointed representative, supplemented by your network's standards. Do not take specifics from an article. Confirm them through your compliance route.

What no rulebook can give you is the quality of the writing, and quality is where files stand or fall. A file that meets every content requirement but does not explain its own reasoning will not protect anybody.