This month we are sitting down with John Phillips (pictured), national operations director of Just Mortgages. The broker has over 600 advisers working either on an employed or self-employed basis.
He has worked in the mortgage industry for over 35 years, having been with Just Mortgages for over eight years. Before that, he held roles at KFH and Provident Life.
Q: How did you get into the mortgage industry?
A: I fell into it. I left school with no qualifications at the age of 16 and I became an apprentice engineer because that is what my Dad did. I did it for about six years, and while it was a job and it brought in income, I wasn’t feeling excited about going to work every day.
So, I walked down my local high street, which was Chatham in Rochester, and I met one of the careers advisors, who put me forward for a role as district agent for Royal London Mutual. I went along to the interview and the guy that interviewed me he changed my life. It sounds a bit dramatic, but he actually shouldn’t have taken me on because I had no qualifications and there was a minimum number of O Levels required and I didn’t have anything.
I learnt a lot about the industry but mainly, if I’m honest, I learnt about dealing with customers and different types of people. Maidstone is a fairly affluent area, but it had some areas where there were challenges. It made me realize that there was a lot more to life than just people having lots of money, nice houses and nice cars, there was the other end of society where they had a different spend set, they couldn’t afford certain things.
It was very gratifying looking after them, helping some of them buy houses and get them protection for themselves and their family.
After that, a friend of mine owned an estate agent in Epsom in Surrey and I always had this inkling towards mortgages more than anything else and I found them very intriguing. I still do, after 35 years, and I went to be a broker with there. So, I did mortgage broking on my own for about six years, then I joined Winchester Life which was a Swiss insurer as a sales manager and the rest is history.
Q: What have the biggest changes been in the mortgage industry? Have they been positive or negative?
A: I can’t think of any that have been negative. I think they’re all to do with the customer and making sure the customer is at the heart of everything we do, which I know is a cliche, but it’s actually true. You’ve got to get it right for the customer and they’ll come back to you time and time again, which again is part of our key strategy with Just Mortgages.
I think when I started what 30-odd years ago, there was no fact find, no record of advice, no commission disclosure. There was none of anything that we do now. I think all the things that we’ve done as an industry over the last 34 years have been to the good.
With Consumer Duty on the horizon, that’s another big step in the right direction because I think there are some people that look at the industry as “they earn an awful lot of money, but they don’t do a lot”.
I don’t think we necessarily need to prove what we do but I think what we have got to ensure that the customer and wider world see that we are we give value for money and we are we are doing what is right for the customer rather than the horror stories of many years ago with endowments, pension mis-selling and PPI.
History is littered with these and actually now you’d like to think with greater regulation that we’ve got in place that that none of that type of thing should actually happen again.
Q: The past few years have been especially tumultuous, do you think the pandemic/cost of living will have long-term ramifications for the sector?
A: When the pandemic was going on, I didn’t fear for our industry, but I feared that fewer customers on the protection side really knew what they’d purchased, and they could be on furlough and looking for savings.
Now if we look at the cost of living, I was worried people would get rid of their protection policies because they didn’t understand them and wanted to save money. But, and I can only really speak to our experience, it’s actually been the opposite.
Customers have seen their protection products and the value of advice coming to mortgage advisors as really high on the list. I’m proud of our industry for that fact alone. That we can help them in their hour of need.
During Covid our firm went back over the last five years of our client base and tried to make contact with every single one of them. Now, sometimes we didn’t because we couldn’t get hold of them, but we spoke to an awful lot of people, reassuring them that we were there and that the products they’ve got were the right ones for them.
I think that’s a good legacy and I hope we can I hope we carry on with it, because it was obviously a really tough time for everybody.
Q: Just Mortgages has been growing its team, is there a target number of people that you want to get too?
A: I don’t have number in mind or a size in mind, what we do have is our ethos and our beliefs. What we want to do is we want to work with advisers who want to join us, they want to have a good salary, but they want them to do things in the right way. We will look after them as long as they look after the customers and we’ll train and support them. If they want to leave to go somewhere else, that’s fine, that’s their choice.
But I want to grow in the right way. I don’t want to be a megalomaniac is to say we want to be x because that’s not our plan. Our plan is to do things right and be straightforward and if we grow on the back of that, which history over the last eight years shows that has happened, that’s great.
From an outlook for the business, we’ve now got an estate agency, client service and advisors, new build advisors, self-employed and wealth advisers. We’re rounding the circle and I’m looking at every part of the mortgage and financial services industry, so if any of my advisors want to go into any of those areas, they can do it with us.
Q: An initiative that Just Mortgages have launched is the academy. How has that been going?
A: We do a minimum of five academies a year, and typically we get 1,000 CVs for every single one of them. Then we whittle that down, and we take on between 15 and 20 every time so that’s close to 75 to 80 every year. They work very well, although we do get some people that have been there a week and go, actually, it’s not for me and that’s fine. I’ve got no issue with that at all. But we’ve got some highly successful people that have gone on to still be with us and run their own business. Some people who went through our academies have got seven to 10 people working for them and that’s terrific.
We will do as many academies each year as we possibly can, and 90% of those on them won’t have a degree, or if they have a degree, it’s almost certainly in a subject that’s not related to industry.
All a degree tells me is that they have an ability to observe and absorb information. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they can deal with a vulnerable customer or a customer that needs a certain type of advice, it’s about the individual.
Q: How important is it to get new blood into the industry?
A: I think it’s absolutely crucial to get new blood into the industry. I think we are duty bound to bring fresh people into the industry.
The person that interviewed me shouldn’t have given me my first position. Ever since then, I’ve always, always said to my recruitment team: I’m not concerned about the individual’s qualifications. It’s about the person and what they stand for.
What I mean by that is, we always do a telephone interview and ask certain questions to find out whether they have the skill set and the ability to empathise with customers at whatever level they are.
The actual qualification bit for me is immaterial. I went to school, there were 100 people in my year and virtually all of them weren’t academic. There are lots of lots of people leaving school that may not be academic, but they’re very personable individuals that want to do the right thing for people and I think the mortgage and protection gives people the ability to do that.
Q: Another aspect of Just Mortgages business is the mental health support and workshops that you offer firms. How has that been received and how important is it for brokers to be able to access mental health support?
A: I can’t take any credit for this at all. In our Learning and Development department, we have a woman that had struggled a bit herself and she was one of the trainers and she put a proposal forward and it was exactly what we needed.
It has been received extremely well. There have been a number of people that have used it, obviously, I don’t know who they are, nor would I wish to know. But it’s part of what we do, it’s not just about looking after customers, you’ve got to look after each other. Times are really tough, and people have been, and will be, going through some really difficult stuff.
Q: What are the biggest opportunities and challenges for this year and what is Just Mortgages plans to navigate them?
A: I think the challenge and opportunity, strangely enough, is to keep talking and giving knowledge to our customers. If you turn on the television or read certain newspapers, you would think the world was going to end because there is just so much negativity out there about certain subjects. I’m not sure if it’s misreporting but it’s certainly not balanced.
I think the big challenge for us this year is to try and get across to customers as much as we can about what is really happening and what is really going on out there.
