I can’t believe another week has gone by – it must be the law of ‘start-ups’ that time speeds up the closer you get to launch.

The system is coming along leaps and bounds thanks to the heroic efforts of DPR Consulting and our very own IT crowd while the ‘testers’ continue to find ways to make the system fall over so that it works when we go live.

We have finally made a decision on our valuation panel and are pleased to hook up with some ‘old’ contacts; it is so much better to do business with people you’ve known for a long time.

This week we also announced the details of some of our initial intermediary distribution partners – again people we’ve known for a long time and who will be understanding during our early launch. Thanks to them for their support.

Two new experienced staff members are also poised to join us; our premises seemed empty a couple of weeks ago and now feels slightly more cosy but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sponsored

Are your clients ready for the first Making Tax Digital reporting deadline?

Sponsored by BM Solutions

Part of this week was spent on ‘business risks’, some might say a necessary evil but tremendously useful in terms of helping us think about what ‘icebergs’ might lie ahead. Once upon a time ‘Business Risk’ was consigned to a group of deep thinkers who were kept away in dark rooms, far removed from the operational team – but no longer.

In today’s world it’s a strange business that doesn’t have a living ‘risk register’, which for us covers three main headings: operational risk, credit risk and market risk.

We are getting much closer to homing in on our product mix, which are specific parts of the buy-to-let sector that we want to move into quickly. This, for me, is the exciting part. There’s definitely some space in the market that we see as being underserved and if all goes to plan we’ll have some interesting products for our initial partners to offer.

As time marches on we’re now into due diligence with our key funding partner and their counterparties. Although the team are used to managing these presentations, there is nonetheless a lot of excitement in the office with this added interest. Keep your fingers crossed for us but looking through the presentations we really do have a strong proposition.

Finally, a reminder this week of why we all do what we do – one of our key members of staff became a father. We can’t afford anyone to be away from the office at this critical stage but the reason we come to work is all about our families and our home life. Needless to say everyone in the office was chuffed for the new parents and the new baby – might they choose ‘Fleet’ as a middle name? I wouldn’t. Quite frankly, time with the family is way more important than work at a time like this, so congratulations my friend and take your time.

Bob Young is Chief Executive Officer of Fleet Mortgages