A: Jeremy Duncombe, Head of Sales at Abbey for Intermediaries
As the UK’s second largest mortgage lender, this is definitely a question that crops up and our unequivocal answer is that, yes, we are committed to continuing to support the housing market and we want to increase our mortgage lending in 2011.
The release of our latest results in Q3 showed total gross mortgage lending of £19.2bn over the first nine months of the year, up 3% and meaning that as a business, we are writing almost one in five mortgages in the UK.
The majority of this lending was through intermediaries and we want to maintain and grow our share of the intermediary mortgage market in 2011.
Despite the improvements in service that Abbey for Intermediaries has made over the past 10 months, service remains a key priority for us this year as we work towards becoming the intermediary lender of choice.
A lot of the feedback that our BDMs are receiving from intermediaries reflects the massive turnaround in service we have achieved and we are committed to introducing further enhancements this year, to help make it as easy as possible for intermediaries to place their business with us.
Another question that sometimes comes up is how intermediaries can get the most value from their relationship with their BDM. As an industry, we have seen the role of the BDM evolve significantly since the onset of the financial crisis to become much more proactive, with a much greater focus on BDMs offering not only product and rate information but information and education on lending policy and procedures too.
We have one of the largest sales forces in the market, made up of both field based BDMs and telephone BDMs, and we always advise our BDMs to discuss with intermediaries how they can best offer them the support they need, to add real value to the intermediary’s business.
The UK mortgage market needs a strong intermediary market and we are committed to continuing to support intermediaries in 2011 by becoming the intermediary lender of choice.
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