Rejected Home Loan Switch

Re Home Loan Application: 980246 or ********** 012084

My husband and I app**** for a Home Loan switch from a financial institution (we both have been using for many many years) to First National Bank. One would assume that First National Bank will grab the opportunity to win not one, but two potential clients. But our application was rejected due to “numerous unpaids" - which is just another word for bounced transactions.

What FNB does not take into account is that just because a payment reflects "unpaid" on a statements, doesn't mean the account was ever in arrears or that it wasn't settled immediately. The money was just not in that specific account at that specific moment. All of those "unpaid" transactions was rectified ASAP.

I assume FNB puts the statements through some sort of system that applies a rule, as soon as it picks up "unpaid debit", it gets flagged and the system declines the application. But how can FNB assume it was unpaid if you pay it from another account or if you immediately transferred money to rectify the bounced payment from one of your multiple other accounts?

There shouldn't be an issue with our application. A bounced debit order does not mean you have a bad credit record. There can be lots of reason why it bounced. It's not an indicator of a real unpaid debit.

For example, one of the bounced transactions FNB used to decline our application was due to monies paid to another account of mine. Before we bought the house, my husband and I used another account for our rent. Rent was paid from that account. I never stopped the recurring payment to that account, so in essence what happened was, I was "still paying rent", but also our bond. Therefor the money was unfortunately just in the wrong account at the wrong moment.

Just another thing to consider, we were busy with renovations at that stage, so we moved money A LOT between different accounts. Literally depending on which card we had with us, and whom of us was doing the purchases. Also, which contractor was stored as a beneficiary on which one of our accounts. Not taking into account that there were some last debit orders still due for the month.

I don't think FNB was looking at the application holistically. I, myself, have 5 different accounts at three different financial institutions. FNB did an assessment based on only one of my accounts.