When several people apply for a mortgage together, Trail places everyone attached to a shared mortgage opportunity on the same profile — and everyone on that profile can see each other's details. Most of the time that's exactly what you want. Occasionally, though, the parties in a joint application would prefer to keep their personal and financial information private from one another.
A example: a mother and father, together with their daughter and her husband, all want to buy a property together. That's four contacts who naturally sit across two separate profiles, and the two profiles would like to keep their information confidential from one another.
This article explains how to run a joint mortgage opportunity in Trail while keeping each party's information private.
Before you start: It helps to understand how contacts and profiles work in Trail. See Understanding contacts and profiles.
How confidentiality works in Trail
Trail is designed so that everyone attached to a mortgage opportunity can view the details of everyone else on that opportunity. There is no per-contact privacy setting within a single profile. The method below works around this by keeping each profile separate while they complete their information, and only bringing everyone together once their logins have been switched off.
Step-by-step
Step 1 — Create a separate profile for each party
Create one profile for the mother and father, and a second, separate profile for their daughter and her husband. Keeping each party on its own profile means neither can see the other's information at this stage.
Step 2 — Create a mortgage opportunity in each profile
Within each of the two profiles, create a mortgage opportunity.
Step 3 — Ask each client to complete their Fact Find
Send each individual their own Fact Find to complete. If you need to send more than one invitation within a single profile, see How to send multiple Fact Find invitation links within one profile.
Step 4 — Turn off each client's login
Once everyone has completed their Fact Find, switch off all of their logins. This is what prevents anyone from signing in and viewing another party's details once the profiles are combined.
To turn off a login:
Open the contact and click Edit.
Click the Actions button on the contact.
Click Change login email.
Rather than changing the client's email address completely, simply add a few characters to the end of it — for example, change name@yahoo.com to name@yahoo.com.abc.
Tip: Adding these characters means the client can no longer log in, so they won't be able to view their own details or anyone else's once everyone shares a profile. Keep a note of which email you changed so you can reverse it later (Step 7).
Step 5 — Create a new joint profile
With all logins switched off, create a new profile that brings everyone together, and add the existing contacts to it.
Step 6 — Create the joint mortgage opportunity
Create a new mortgage opportunity within the joint profile, then run it as you normally would.
Keep in mind:
Fact Find information carries across to the new opportunity automatically, but documents do not. You'll need to download the documents from each client's original profile and upload them to the joint opportunity.
Because your clients' logins are switched off, they won't be able to action anything themselves — you'll need to manage the opportunity from your end.
Step 7 — Re-enable logins safely once the opportunity is complete
Once the joint mortgage opportunity has run its course, don't simply switch the logins back on. Because all parties now sit on the same profile, re-enabling their logins as-is would give everyone access to each other's information.
Instead, for each contact in the joint profile:
Set the contact's status to Unspecified.
Re-enable the login by removing the
.abcyou added to their email address in Step 4.