How to run remortgage reminders from your clients' product end dates

You run remortgage reminders well by keeping one register of every client's product end date, sending an invitation to a review about six months before each date, and chasing until the review is booked or the client has said no. The invitation says a date is coming and offers a conversation. It quotes no rate and names no product. Everything after the booking is the adviser's. The risk to watch is that the client's own lender writes to them first.

Why six months

When a fixed or discounted rate ends, the borrower moves to the lender's reversion rate, which the FCA says will typically be higher. Lenders signed up to the Mortgage Charter let a customer approaching the end of a fixed rate lock in a new deal up to six months ahead, and ask for a better like for like deal, if one is available, right up until the new term starts; the charter's footnote says rates must be finalised two weeks before it. So the window in which your client can act opens six months out, and their lender knows the date as well as you do. The FCA's own advice to borrowers is to speak to their lender or a mortgage broker as soon as possible.

The reminder run today, and who does each step

1. Know the dates. They sit in the CRM if the field was filled in at completion, and in the offer documents if it was not. Usually nobody owns the list.

2. Run the list. An administrator pulls the clients whose rates end in the coming months, when there is time.

3. Invite. An email or a call from the adviser, fitted around new business.

4. Chase. It is rarely done more than once.

5. Prepare. Before the review the adviser needs to know what has changed: income, plans, the property.

6. Review and advise. This is the adviser's work.

7. Record the outcome and the next date.

How to tighten it tomorrow

• Build the register. One row per mortgage: client, lender, product end date, adviser, and whether you may contact them. Count the rows with no date; they are business you cannot currently see coming.

• Decide whether the invitation is marketing. The ICO says a message that actively promotes or encourages people to make use of a particular service is likely to be direct marketing, while advising customers in a factual way of their options at the end of a contract, without promoting one over another, may not be. Where it is marketing, unsolicited email to an individual needs their consent or the soft opt-in, with a chance to opt out in every message. Record which applies to each client, and who in your firm made the call.

• Run the list on a fixed day each month, for the dates falling six months ahead.

• Write one invitation and have it approved. It states the client's own end date, taken from the register, in wording approved once for everyone, says their rate will change after it, and offers a review with their adviser. It gives no rate, no product, no forecast and no view on what they should do.

• Decide the chase. For example a second message a month later and a third a month after that, then a call from the adviser.

• Send a short "what has changed" form with the booking, so the adviser arrives informed and the document requests can start early.

• Log every outcome, including "stayed with lender" and "no reply". After a year the register tells you how much of your back book you keep.

Which steps can an AI worker take on?

Here an AI worker works to a written job, with a named person checking what it sends. It can take steps one to four and the booking: the register and its gaps, the monthly list, the approved invitation and its follow-ups, the review in the adviser's diary and the form. It can tell each adviser, every week, which of their clients have a date inside six months and have not booked. The role is specified on the renewals and expiry tracking page, and the booking on diary and scheduling.

In an FCA-regulated firm the line is paperwork, never advice. The invitation and its reminders go in wording approved in advance, and the end date is a field filled from the register, not text composed for the client. Anything else about one client's circumstances waits for the adviser's approval, each time.

What waits for a person, and why

• The review and the recommendation. The FCA's mortgage rules require a firm that advises a customer to take a new mortgage, or to vary an existing one, to take reasonable steps to ensure it is suitable. Whether to stay with the lender, move or do nothing is advice.

• Any reply that asks a question. "What rate could I get?" and "should I wait?" go to the adviser unanswered.

• A client in difficulty. A reply mentioning missed payments, a lost job or a separation goes straight to the adviser.

• Phone calls. Any call is made by a person.

What to settle before the first invitation goes

• Where the end dates are held, and who will settle the missing ones.

• Each client's contact permission.

• The invitation and reminders, approved by whoever signs off client communications.

• The lead time and the chase intervals.

• Each adviser's diary rules.

• The "what has changed" form.

The paperwork around a brokerage's cases is on our page for mortgage brokers. Why the reviews falling due grow with every year of trading is part of how to scale a mortgage brokerage without hiring more staff.

An AI worker would keep a mortgage brokerage's register of end dates and get each review into the adviser's diary in good time, in wording you have approved, and the advice would stay with your advisers. Talk to our agent about giving the list of end dates an owner.