For this week’s Marketwatch, our commentators are:
Brain Murphy, head of lending at Mortgage Advice Bureau thinks the industry needs to get the message out there that young people can have a successful career in the mortgage market
Richard Adams, managing director of Stonebridge Group says that young advisers can bring a new enthusiasm to a mortgage brokerage and help the business develop.
Pat Bunton, director at London & Country worries that the after the considerable expense of training a new broker, they could move to another firm.
Brain Murphy, head of lending at Mortgage Advice Bureau
The last five years has witnessed the number of advisers working in the intermediary mortgage sector decline to the point where it is estimated adviser numbers are now roughly a third of where they were prior to the credit crisis.
One of the unintended consequences of the regulators failure to introduce a central register means that a definitive number is not really known but approximately 10,000 is most people’s best estimate.
One of the potential consequences of the financial crisis and the subsequent mis-selling scandals including PPI and Libor manipulation is that it will have almost certainly turned off potential recruits from considering a career in the financial services industry.
With mortgage volumes a third of their former level and with many adviser firms under significant cost pressure taking on new recruits and putting in place structured training and development, programmes for new trainees will not have been a priority for many firms.
Notwithstanding that an excellent example of a firm who have thought ahead is Coreco, an AR of MAB who have been successful in offering a series of apprenticeships to attract new young recruits and initiatives such as this are both welcome and provide a blueprint for others to consider in the future.
As an industry, mortgage advisers are an ageing population and if firms are to expand and take advantage of what we all hope is the start of a pick-up in activity we need to get the message out that the mortgage market offers a positive career choice and that advisers can make a good living and for some the opportunity to own and run their own businesses.
Richard Adams, managing director of Stonebridge Group
As with any industry, the mortgage market is reliant on new blood coming through to ensure its future success and this is particularly true of the broker channel.
Older advisers play an invaluable role in terms of the experience and knowledge they bring to proceedings, but at some point the baton has to be passed to the younger generation.
At Stonebridge, we offer young brokers the opportunity to obtain the necessary qualifications, undertake sales training and gain access to a lead source through our relationship with Legal & General, which all helps to get them up and running. L&G itself runs a ‘school of excellence’ which is proving very successful in terms of producing high quality ‘graduates’.
One of the main advantages we find in dealing with younger advisers is not only their enthusiasm, but the way they are more open to new ideas and suggestions than their more mature counterparts.
They often enter the market with no pre-conceived ideas, so are more willing to accept the diverse opportunities the market offers rather than have a ‘tunnel-vision’ towards mortgages like some more-experienced intermediaries might have.
Now more than ever, it is vital that brokers continue to evolve and adapt and brokers – whatever their age – must never lose sight of that.
Pat Bunton, director at London & Country
L&C has grown organically over many years and a key part of our recruitment policy has been to encourage bright young graduates to seek a career in financial services.
By selecting potential advisers from a large pool of motivated young graduates we have been able to harness enthusiasm, the ability to learn and mould these recruits through an intensive training programme into top class mortgage and protection advisers.
Recruiting in this way, as opposed to engaging in the more usual merry go round of tempting advisers to jump ship from other firms means we carry a relatively high training cost.
The upside though is that these young graduates are bright, motivated and untainted by previous bad habits – they carry no baggage and in simple terms, they learn to do business the L&C way from Day 1.
We genuinely believe that the work and effort associated with attracting young blood into our industry is the right way forwards and it has been a successful formula for us, but it does not come without some pain, especially when a fully trained adviser gets enticed away after benefitting from our fantastic training.
On the plus side this approach gives us fresh energetic and enthusiastic people to blend with established and experienced advisers and this blend of youth and experience is very healthy indeed.
Many of our most successful managers have risen right the way through our organisation and maintaining the flow of new talent through our doors is one of the keys to our future success.
