WhatsApp follow-up for mortgage brokers

Clients answer WhatsApp. They ignore email, screen unknown numbers and forget voicemails, but a green tick sits on their home screen and gets read within minutes. That makes it genuinely useful for the fiddly middle of a mortgage case, where you need one payslip, one date confirmed or one question answered.

It also drags a regulated conversation onto a channel that lives on somebody's personal phone, outside your case management system, in a format that is easy to delete and hard to supervise. Both of those things are true at once, and a firm using WhatsApp seriously has to deal with the second before it can enjoy the first.

What it is good for

WhatsApp works for short, factual exchanges once a relationship already exists. Confirming an appointment. Chasing a missing bank statement. Telling someone their offer has come through. Answering "has the valuation been booked yet" on a Sunday evening without a phone call.

It is a poor place for the things that need care: anything resembling advice, anything with numbers a client might act on, anything you would want a full record and a considered tone for. If a message is turning into three paragraphs about affordability, stop typing and ring them.

Sort out permission before the first message

You need two things straight. The first is a lawful basis for using the number at all under UK data protection law, and a client who gave you their mobile so you could progress their mortgage has plainly given you that for case-related contact.

The second is different and stricter: sending anything promotional by electronic message is governed by the PECR rules on direct marketing, which generally require consent. A message telling a client their case has completed is service. A message telling that same client that rates have moved and they should get in touch is marketing, and it needs a basis and an easy way to stop it. The line is not always obvious, so decide in advance which of your messages fall on which side and write it down.

Ask people whether they are happy to be contacted on WhatsApp rather than assuming, record the answer in the client file, and stop immediately when someone says they would rather not.

Use the business tools, not your personal account

Advisers messaging clients from personal accounts is where most of the risk sits. If the adviser leaves, the record leaves with them. If a client complains, you cannot see what was said. If a phone is lost, client data goes with it.

At minimum, use the WhatsApp Business app on a firm-owned number, with a profile that names the firm, sets business hours and carries an away message. Larger firms can go further and connect through the business platform so that conversations flow into a system the firm controls, with supervision and retention handled centrally. That costs money and setup time, and it is the difference between a channel you can defend and one you are hoping nobody asks about.

Either way, keep it off personal devices where you can, and switch off automatic backup of business conversations to an adviser's personal cloud account.

Keeping records that satisfy a file check

A supervisor reviewing a case should be able to see the whole conversation, not the parts that happened to be emailed. Decide how messages get into the client file: an integration, a scheduled export, or an adviser copying material exchanges into the case notes the same day.

Screenshots pasted into a CRM are unlovely but they are far better than nothing. What is not acceptable is a case file that ends abruptly because the last three weeks of it happened in an app nobody exported.

Set a retention position too. If your policy keeps client communications for a defined number of years, that includes these, and disappearing messages should be switched off on any account used with clients.

Writing messages people actually answer

• Say who you are in the first message every time until you are saved as a contact. "Hi Sam, it's Priya at Waterhouse Mortgages" costs nothing.
• One question per message. Two questions in one message reliably get one answer.
• Ask for the specific document, not the category. "Could you send the March payslip, the one with the bonus on it?" beats "could you send your payslips".
• Say when you will be back if you are asking outside your hours.
• Do not send anything with figures in it that the client might rely on. Put those in writing properly and say in the message that you have emailed it.
• Voice notes are fine for explaining something fiddly, provided the file is retained like any other record. They are not fine for anything a client might later dispute.

The mistakes worth avoiding

Group chats with a client and their partner are common and reasonable. Group chats that also include an estate agent or a solicitor are a confidentiality problem waiting to happen, because everyone in that group can see everything, including someone's employment situation.

Forwarding a client's documents on to a third party through the same app is another. Route documents through your secure portal, however inconvenient that feels in the moment.

And be careful about tone drift. The informality that makes the channel work also makes it easy to say something loose about a lender's likely decision. A message is a written record, and a cheerful "should be fine" reads very differently six months later.

House rules worth writing down

A single page is enough. Which number the firm uses, who has access to it, what may and may not be discussed on it, how conversations reach the client file, how long they are kept, what the away message says, and how a client opts out of anything promotional.

Give it to every adviser on their first day and check compliance with it during your normal file reviews. WhatsApp is a good channel for brokers precisely because it is casual for the client. The firm's side of it should not be casual at all.