What personal talent or skill is most valuable in doing your job?
The most important thing for a broker is ensuring their client has both a good experience and achieves the right outcome, so beyond being a talent or skill, I think trust is the most important thing in this role. Brokers need to be confident that when they choose a partner, provider or lender and recommend them to a client, that client will receive the same level of care and service they would provide themselves. Building that trust takes time and you have to earn it through what you do, rather than simply what you say you are going to do.
What personal talent or skill would you most like to improve?
Going back to that point about trust – for me, it is about continuing to build and develop relationships outside my existing network through my new role. I have been in the broker market for a long time and have been fortunate to build some very strong relationships, but there are always more people to meet and more opportunities to demonstrate the value you can bring. I feel very confident about doing that with a great team and proposition behind me at Conveybuddy.
What is the hardest part of your job?
Traffic and not eating the biscuits. More seriously, when you spend a lot of time out meeting brokers, the challenge is making sure you use that time well and are genuinely useful to the people you are seeing. Brokers are busy and there is no point turning up simply for the sake of being visible, so I always want there to be a reason for the conversation and something useful they can take from it.
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What do you love most about your job?
Spending time in the company of other people. There are some great characters in this market who are always ready to share their experience, offer an opinion and help others, so it is a great place to work. I have spent a long time in this market now, and the relationships you build over the years are a huge part of what makes the job enjoyable.
What is the best piece of career-related advice you have ever been given? Who gave it to you?
I don’t know that I can attribute it to a single individual because I’ve worked with so many great people who have shared a similar ethos, but the basic message is that if you want to be meaningful and get on in this industry, the most important thing is to show up.
Fred Sharp put it particularly well while I was working under him at The Co-operative Bank for Intermediaries when he said: “Don’t just be visible when things are going well.” That has always stayed with me, because relationships are tested when something is difficult or does not go according to plan. People want someone they can rely on and who will still answer the phone and help find a way forward when there is a problem.
How do you keep up to date with market developments?
I read the news and trade press regularly, but some of the most useful insight comes directly from brokers and other people working in the market. When you are out meeting firms, you quickly get a sense of the issues they are dealing with, what clients are asking them about and where there might be gaps in the service they are receiving. I think you need both sides of it: keeping on top of the formal market news while also listening to what is actually happening on the ground.
What is the most quirky or unique deal you have been involved in?
There were certainly some quirky cases during my time working for a lender, but one I remember particularly clearly takes me back to my time working for a packager in the early 2000s. We were helping structure the refinancing of around 30 flats across three or four blocks and there was only a limited number of lenders we could use for that particular deal, with most of those brands having long since disappeared.
I had to consider the assured shorthold tenancies (ASTs), lender exposure, the number of floors, an element of ex-local authority property and a host of other factors across the different flats. It was complex then, so I can only imagine what the same case would look like today given all the changes to lending rules and legislation, but we managed to get them all away. My enduring memory is having a huge sheet of paper in front of me and literally drawing the whole thing out so I could work through how all the different parts fitted together.
Tell us about your trickiest case – what happened and how did you resolve the problem(s)?
I absolutely loved rolling up my sleeves and helping with tricky cases while working for a lender, particularly when the broker was able to articulate why it was a good case and I could then take that into underwriting and argue its merits. There was a range of scenarios that were typically under-served, often relating to income or the property itself, where a case might not initially fit neatly within standard criteria but still made sense when you looked at the full circumstances.
What was your motivation for choosing this career?
I can’t honestly say I really chose it in the beginning, and I suspect that is true of quite a few people who have spent a long time in financial services. What kept me here, though, was definitely the people and the relationships. I enjoy working with brokers, solving problems and being out talking to people, and over the years I have been fortunate enough to build relationships with people across the industry that have lasted through several different roles. That is a big part of why I still enjoy doing what I do.
If you could do any other job in the property sector, what would it be and why?
Possibly the same job but in Costa Rica. I’m not sure that technically counts as another job, but why not. If I can keep the people, relationships and conversations while adding some Costa Rican sunshine, that sounds like a fairly good deal to me.
