The number of cases of mortgage fraud has been on the rise, with brokers warned to look out for falsified documents supplied by clients seeking unsuitable loans.
“Unfortunately, fraud continues to increase year on year,” said Paul Palmer, Connective’s compliance support manager, at the aggregator’s professional development day in Sydney on Thursday (23 March).
“The technological advancements of digital applications enable people to create documents or change existing documents to be more and more authentic looking.”
The aggregator has seen statements that lenders could only identify as fraudulent because they had no record of issuing them, Palmer said.
“Obviously, you can’t expect brokers to pick that up. Fortunately for us, most people trying to commit fraud aren’t that good. They always make spelling mistakes, a typo, or they get their mathematics wrong.”
As fraud investigations are inherently unpleasant for both broker and aggregator, Palmer urged a proactive rather than reactive approach.
To do this, he suggested brokers undertake all due diligence, meet required responsible lending obligations, cross check & verify all documents provided by the customer, and look for inconsistencies.
“We see a lot of differences in fonts, in key financial data, and also, as I said, a lot of mathematical areas. Run their payslips through the pay calculator and you’ll be amazed at how often that finds something.
“One of the biggest ones I found over the past 12 months is where there were two payslips and they forgot to change the accrued annual leave entitled from payslip to payslip; which we would expect to change. It’s a very common mistake.”
If it is impossible to meet the customer face-to-face, Palmer encouraged brokers to mitigate any risks by becoming familiar with conditions that lenders set up to accept remote broker-client meetups.
“From our perspective, a good thing is to get certified ID. Through Skype or Facetime conversations, get a snapshot of their ID. It fulfils an obligation to show you actually know who you’re dealing with.”
Finally, Palmer warned brokers to put themselves in the right mindset when it comes to fraud.
“Don’t think that you can’t get caught,” he said. “Unfortunately, there’s been a significant increase in the amount of referrals looking to give loans to mortgage brokers. In particular new-to-industry brokers have been targeted by people who have clients that can only service or get a loan through submitting fraudulent documentation.”
He urged brokers to do due diligence on their referrers as well.
“Make sure you’re comfortable with them as people, make sure they’re people you do your own business with yourself, and don’t trust anything they give you more than anything provided by your clients. In some ways, you need to be more skeptical.”
