Use this article to run one mortgage application for several people who are applying for a loan together but live separately, for example three friends buying a property together. You'll collect each person's fact find individually, then bring everyone together in a joint profile for the application.
When do I need this process?
Use this process when multiple applicants are applying for a loan together but don't currently live together. Each participant completes their own fact find from their own profile, so nobody sees anyone else's information, and the joint profile then pulls everything together for the application.
If your applicants live at the same address and you just need to keep their expenses separate, that's a different process: see Representing multiple individual client expenses within one household.
How do I collect each participant's fact find?
1. Make sure each participant has their own individual profile in Trail.
2. Create a new Mortgage Advice Opportunity for each participant, and select Fact Find Only when creating the opportunity (shown below). Fact Find Only matters here; the reason is explained in the documents section further down.
3. Send each participant their own Fact Find link. Each person completes their fact find from their own profile, without seeing the other participants' information.
How do I create the joint profile?
1. Go to your Contacts tab, click Add New, and select Add New Profile.
2. Select Existing Contact, type in one participant's name and select them, then choose as part of a personal situation to create the new profile.
3. On the new profile, add the remaining participants in the Contacts section (click Add Contact, then Existing Contact for each person).
4. Rename the new profile so you can tell the joint profile apart from each participant's individual profile: click the Actions button next to the profile name, choose Rename profile, and click the tick circle to save.
How do I create the joint application?
1. On the joint profile, click Add Opportunity and set up the opportunity as normal.
2. Because each participant completed their fact find in their own profile, their information pulls through into the joint opportunity automatically.
3. Check the pull-through worked: open the Position tab. All participants and their details should be there. If someone's details are missing, check that their individual fact find was completed and that they've been added as a contact on the joint profile. If it still doesn't look right, email support@gettrail.com.
4. Complete the application as normal.
Why Fact Find Only, and how do I get their documents?
Documents do not pull through into the joint profile from the participants' individual profiles. That's why we recommend Fact Find Only instead of Fact Find plus Document Request when creating the individual opportunities: ask each participant to email you their documents instead. Through your email integration, those documents then appear on the joint profile for all participants.
Should I keep or archive the individual profiles?
That's your call as the adviser, and it depends on whether the participants need their separate profiles for anything else. One thing worth knowing when deciding: once the joint profile exists, each client can access both their old profile and the new joint profile from the Client Portal. Archiving the individual opportunities and profiles you no longer need avoids that confusion; keeping them is fine if the clients still use them.
Questions about multi-participant applications?
Get in touch at support@gettrail.com, or use the chat button in the bottom right of the screen.