This month, we are sitting down with Colin Bell, co-founder and chief operating officer at Perenna.
How did you get into the mortgage industry?
After passing my FPC, I began working as a self-employed IFA for a sole trader where I advised on insurance, life, investment and mortgage products. Being self-employed at a very early stage in my career taught me a lot about resilience, work ethic and how to run a self-funded business. While there, I was headhunted by John Charcol, then a small but very successful business, and worked my way up to senior management with equity in the business. In 2006, I embarked on my next challenge – successfully setting up and running specialist lender InterBay, which is now part of OneSavings Bank.
What has your biggest learning been over your career?
This is a tough question, as I’ve learned a great deal from each of my key roles – often spending close to a decade at each organisation. One of the most significant lessons I’ve developed over time, through experience, observation, and training, is the importance of leadership – particularly leadership style.
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I’ve had the opportunity to witness both effective and ineffective leadership, and those experiences have shaped my own approach. I’m a strong believer in pull leadership, which is centred around inspiring and empowering your team to work towards a shared goal and leading from the front. I’ve seen first-hand that this style fosters a more resilient culture and delivers better results in the medium and long term.
Effective leadership is grounded in authenticity; showing up, getting involved when needed, and setting the tone through both actions and expectations – but also knowing when to step back and see the bigger picture. It’s about striking the right balance: being capable of getting into the detail, with a solid understanding of the broader context, but also knowing when to step out and empower others to lead, grow, and succeed. That balance is critical to building high-performing teams and sustainable success.
Underlying all of this is culture, which sits at the heart of any successful organisation. A positive culture creates the environment where people can thrive, while a negative culture can act like a slow rot – undermining trust, morale, and performance if not addressed quickly. Culture is also an increasing area of focus for regulators, who rightly recognise the role it plays in long-term stability and ethical behaviour.
Perenna specialises in long-term fixed rates; have attitudes to longer-term deals changed since you launched? What is demand like currently for the product and do you expect that to continue/change?
Attitudes among consumers and intermediaries have definitely changed. The concept is now widely appreciated and understood. Once the misunderstandings around long-term products have been debunked, intermediaries see the product complements their tool kit. Consumers have been very quick to love the concept of rate stability while keeping some flexibility, as well as the benefits these products can bring, such as increased affordability. Demand has been steady and we expect it to increase further still when rates are lower. This is the time when it is naturally the product of choice.
Looking at Perenna’s proposition, are there any areas that you want to expand more into or new areas you wish to enter?
As we go through different interest rate cycles and evolve our mortgage funding, we are always exploring other areas that benefit and encourage homeownership. Examples include alternatives to Help to Buy, mid-term fixes and lower-priced products with less flexibility. As always, our priority is innovation in the market to help people get on the ladder.
What is Perenna’s strategy around brokers for the coming year (i.e., lender panels/networks/outreach, etc)?
Our main focus is changing the mindset that comes with longer-term fixes. When everything feels uncertain, it is natural for people to default to traditional, ‘simple’ lenders, but options from others, including Perenna, are not complicated and can be the best option for the borrower, giving them stability.
It can also benefit the intermediary as Perenna’s trail commission provides long-term earning for intermediaries, and removing any bias from mortgage review advice.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is consulting on stress testing changes and simplifying mortgage rules. Perenna has been an advocate for changing loan-to-income (LTI) caps; would you still want to see reform in this area, and what other changes would you like to see?
We have always been very vocal on LTI for long-term fixed rate mortgages. We agree with the principle and other changes in the MMR. However, there is a strong argument for a different approach to LTI for longer fixes and mortgages where the customer does not suffer interest rate risk. We either need a different approach to LTI, or to remove the cap for longer fixes in the same way a like-for-like remortgage is excluded.
Perenna has joined several schemes like Own New and Deposit Unlock in the past year; how has that been and are there any other discussions currently?
We are part of these schemes as they align with our mission to make homeownership more accessible. They are wide schemes with many lenders and we are keen to see them expand. We are looking at alternatives to Help to Buy, as the scheme was very effective in getting more people onto the property ladder.
Perenna recently said it would back Gen H’s Help to Buy alternative through a funding relationship. Can you talk us through that a bit more? Is Perenna exploring further funding opportunities?
We have now successfully launched our funding relationship with Gen H to support its newest proposition, New Build Boost, a scheme that allows borrowers with a 5% deposit to access its 80% loan-to-value (LTV) mortgages, with housebuilders filling the 15% gap with a zero-interest loan. Activity has been good; in fact, we have already seen money go out on the product in a very short space of time.
We are always exploring other opportunities to fund other innovative products that will make homeownership more accessible and create a nation of happy homeowners.
What is the current headcount for the firm and are there any recruitment plans?
Our proprietary technology enables automated credit and affordability decisioning with minimal questions to allow for same-day offers where AVMs are accessible. This means the efficient growth of volumes is not reliant on the growth of our headcount, thus improving product economics and returns. This will continue to be part of our growth plans for 2025 into 2026.
What would you want brokers and others in the sector to know about Perenna?
It is very easy to forget one firm’s differences when everyone else does things very similarly, but Perenna was the first lender in the longer fix niche and we have a lot of USPs. We really don’t have a maximum age at any time and we don’t stress for interest rate risk, as we are fixed for the long term – often allowing people to borrow more. On top of that, long-term fixes can be flexible, so clients can borrow on joint income into retirement for retirement interest-only (RIO) and our products can be used as an alternative to equity release. We also pay commission through the life of a loan to reflect the work brokers do when they review customers, to name but a few.
Talk to us, try our calculators and see how we are different. Our broker support team has a really high NPS score, which is a credit to them. Reach out and learn about Perenna and how we are changing things.
