Mortgage sourcing systems should be used as a guide rather than a comprehensive research tool for anything other than prime mortgage products.

That was the view of Tim Wheeldon, chief operating office at second charge broker Fluent Money and Maeve Ward, managing director of residential mortgages at Shawbrook.

Wheeldon said: “It’s not a criticism of mortgage sourcing systems but you are trying to get a computer to fit an individual with all their myriad of different circumstances by ticking a boss and fundamentally it doesn’t work for anything other than a vanilla product.

“People need to look at sourcing systems as an assistance or guide, not as ‘I have done my research because the sourcing system says this and this is what I’m going to put on my file’ which is where people go wrong.

“From my point of view in the seconds market sourcing systems aren’t as good as they could be but they are as good as they ought to be.”

He added: “Use a sourcing system to find out if a product on the face of it is available, then give it to a master broker or direct to a lender and let them double check what you’ve done and make sure there’s nothing better available.”

Steve Walker, managing director of packager Promise Solutions, said sourcing systems that specialise in second charge like its own Loan Brain system, as well as Loans Engine and Freedom for Intermediaries, are better at looking at underwriting criteria than those with both first and second products like Mortgage Brain, Trigold and Twenty7Tec

He encouraged brokers to use both types of sourcing system – firstly to rule out a first charge and then to get detailed criteria on the second charge.

He explained: “With the high level sourcing systems the broker will go the product, then go onto a page and work out how many CCJs you’re allowed, whereas with our system and others it works all that out for them.”

Maeve Ward reckoned some sourcing systems are more behind than others.

She said: “You click on a link, you are taken to another version of the system and asked to rekey all information.

“If you are an adviser sat behind that with a customer sat in front of you are going to want to do that?

“It’s good as a guide but the same audience doesn’t sit behind every sourcing system so it depends on which one they are looking at.”