So, what can we expect or – more to the point – what do we want to see in the new year? Let’s have a whistlestop tour of where it would be nice to head.
Service level woes
Firstly, let’s start with lenders. How many have covered themselves in glory during the last 12 months? Certainly, service levels among many of the established players – and those not so established – were incredibly poor for a lot of the year.
To give lenders their dues – and this is clearly a problem right across the UK economy but particularly the mortgage and housing market – getting the right recruitment to fill vacancies is difficult and the shift to a work from home/office mix is tricky at present.
However, lenders have also not helped themselves in many instances, taking on huge amounts of business when they could barely process that which was already within their pipelines. It has ended up where a strategy of pumping up the price in order to stem the volumes has become the norm, however when everyone is following the same strategy, we end up with the results we have had to deal with this year.
Plus consumers pay infinitely more than they really should.
It also leaves us in a weird position where some lenders are currently telling us that it will take days to get an offer on new business submitted but appear to have conveniently forgotten the business which we sent in three months ago, which is sitting on a metaphorical desk somewhere and hasn’t been actioned at all.
Redistributing resources
Far be it for us to tell lenders how to do their jobs, but a move which takes resource out of new business to deal with the existing backlog/pipeline problem would be preferable, especially away from the business which is not complex and goes through the system easily anyway. Service could be improved considerably and let’s hope this is a priority.
You would hope lenders are committed to putting more resource into getting on top of service issues, because their new targets for 2023 are unlikely to be less than this year, and the market is likely to be fiercely competitive because they will need to hit the ground running, which is likely to mean a lot of to-ing and fro-ing when it comes to price, but also criteria.
In a way, we hope the return of greater levels of competition next year, heralds the return of lenders genuinely competing for business from within the intermediary sector. We want business development managers (BDMs) to be troubleshooters for us as advisers, knocking on our doors and helping us find solutions for cases.
Consumers come with more complex situations, incomes and the like, than ever before, and we know BDMs are keen to get involved in these cases, to find a way to meet both our and the client’s expectations. A more bespoke lender offering would not only chime with the Consumer Duty but also allow BDMs to do what many are very good at and would help solidify the strong relationships we already have with them.
Glimmers of hope
Overall, even with some media headlines suggesting the year ahead is littered with trouble and obstacles to overcome, we should be positive on what is achievable for our clients, and also that the ‘negatives’ are somewhat overdone.
For example, we’ve recently seen an upturn in purchase activity, and (if as expected) product rates continue to fall and house prices become a bit more affordable, then this presents a better environment for purchasing, particularly for those who have been sitting on their hands recently. And while house prices are likely to fall, even with some of the predictions we are seeing, we would only be back at levels seen 12 months ago.
There is much to be positive about. There are, understandably, a lot of worried consumers out there and that means advice has become much more of a non-negotiable. If lenders can work with us advisers to deliver the products and solutions they need, then we firmly believe 2023 will be a good one, without any fear.
