A client from four years ago, buying again with someone else
You arranged a first-time buyer's mortgage four years ago. The case went well, they were grateful, and you have not spoken since. Their fixed rate has a year to run. Now they are expecting a baby and need a bigger house. They search online, find a broker with a good website, and book a call. You never knew they were moving.
It is not a service failure. It is simply that the brokerage's contact with past clients is concentrated on rate expiry, and life does not wait for rate expiry.
Why brokers lose touch
Brokers are busy with live cases. Staying in touch with past clients feels like marketing, which is easy to postpone. When it does happen, it is often a generic newsletter that clients ignore, rather than something personal and useful.
Contact preferences also need care. Past clients agreed to certain kinds of contact, and a brokerage needs to respect that, which makes some firms nervous about contacting past clients at all.
- Contact focused only on rate expiry.
- Generic newsletters rather than personal messages.
- No prompts at natural moments in the client's life.
- Contact preferences not clearly recorded.
- No simple way for a client to say they are thinking of moving.
Broker turnover makes it worse. When a broker leaves, their past clients often have no named contact at the brokerage at all. The relationship was with a person, and the person has gone.
What losing touch costs
| Life event | What the client needs | Where they go without contact |
|---|---|---|
| Moving home | A new mortgage or porting | Online search, estate agent's broker |
| Extending | Further borrowing | Their lender direct |
| First buy to let | A buy to let mortgage | Whoever a friend recommends |
| Relationship change | A transfer of equity | Their solicitor's contact |
Past clients who were happy with you are the easiest people for a brokerage to help again, and often the most likely to refer friends. Losing touch with them means paying to find new clients instead.
The past client programme we build
- We read past clients from your CRM, with their broker, case type, completion date, rate end date and recorded contact preferences.
- Clients whose preferences allow it receive occasional personal messages from their own broker, at moments that make sense, such as the anniversary of their purchase.
- Messages are short and useful, and include a simple link to say "we might be moving" or "can we have a chat".
- Responses create a task for the broker immediately.
- Clients can change their preferences at any time, and those changes flow back to the CRM.
- Past clients of departed brokers are assigned to a current broker.
- Reports show past clients contacted, responses and new cases from past clients.
What is sent and to whom follows your brokerage's own policies on client contact. We build to those policies.
What the brokerage gets
Past clients hear from their broker at sensible times, in a personal way. Those who are thinking about moving have an easy way to say so. Brokers get warm conversations rather than cold leads. And the owner can see how much business comes back from the past client base.
It also keeps the CRM honest. Messages that bounce, or clients who reply to say they have moved, update contact details that would otherwise quietly go stale until the next rate expiry.
Is this your past client base?
- You only contact past clients at rate expiry.
- Past clients move home without calling you.
- Your newsletter gets little response.
- Contact preferences are not clearly recorded.
- Clients of departed brokers have no contact at all.