This month, we are speaking to Sara Palmer (pictured), sales and distribution director at Gen H.
How has this year gone for you so far?
It’s been a great start to the year from a team perspective. We have hired three business development managers (BDMs), who are all receiving fantastic feedback from broker partners already, plus we created three new roles for existing team members, and since moving into position in January, they have been making a huge impact. We now support – with dedicated roles – networks and clubs, key broker firms, telephone support across the country, and created BDM regions in Scotland, the North of England, the Midlands, the East, London and the South East.
Market-wise, it has been a challenging environment for brokers and lenders, but what we have shown, as we always do, is that we are resilient and can adapt at pace. As we built our entire platform in-house, we can release changes to the market rapidly to meet the needs of brokers and customers. We’ve demonstrated this in quick repricing and releases that have been big wins for our broker partners – self-serve re-offers, constantly improving service level agreements (SLAs), as 35% of our cases are offered within three days, and handing over coverage of our inbound emails to the underwriting team directly.
£2.5m paid to help broker clients benefit from greener homes
Sponsored by Halifax Intermediaries
It has been a little over six months since you joined Gen H. How has that transition been?
Given how different Gen H is compared to previous lenders I have worked for, the transition was smooth and I felt at home very quickly. I was initially drawn to its purpose, enabling more aspiring homeowners. I saw the passion across the business and wanted to get involved and help with the presence they were missing.
We are so much more than a lender that enables new homeowners. I have been so proud to see all kinds of situations where we have helped someone in need, such as adding an income booster in a divorce where the family home would be lost without the additional help.
What I have also loved is what it means to have your own tech – a game-changer. If something needs fixing, we fix it, if something needs building, we build it, and when we want to create more innovative solutions, we do that. That’s much harder at a bigger, less agile lender.
What qualities, learnings or experiences from your career do you feel you’ve brought to the role?
My understanding of intermediaries and how critical they are in the home finance journey. I know how trust and certainty are vital for a broker when placing business, providing them with consistent decisions in good time and having people to speak to who have the technical knowledge to guide them. I have learnt how lacking in good service and consistent decisions can lead to frustration and unnecessarily difficult conversations with clients.
I’m a big believer in investing in our people, so I have set up a training schedule for our whole sales team, and this is already demonstrating value. I have also brought along my optimistic and positive energy, which I hope the sales team have embraced.
Gen H’s proposition has evolved a little since launching in 2021, but how has it remained true to its vision?
Our core mission has stayed the same – we believe homeownership should be possible for everyone. With growing innovation in the first-time buyer space, it is vital that all options are explored to ensure the customer reaches the best outcome for them.
As the way we work changes, as the way wealth transfers through generations shifts, we need to constantly review our proposition to make sure we’re serving those who are traditionally locked out of the high street.
Tech is still crucial to everything we do, and not only enables innovative propositions, like the income booster and New Build Boost, but also allows us to give certainty of execution on complex cases that traditionally are harder and slower to place. We see this tech as experience-enhancing for brokers. It allows them to manage their customers during an emotional transaction more easily.
In what ways does its current proposition support that vision?
Fundamentally, the affordability gap for first-time buyers continues to grow as house prices grow faster than incomes in the UK. The Gen H proposition finds ways for borrowers to bridge that gap with the help of family or friends’ incomes to boost affordability, interest-free equity loans on new-build properties in the form of New Build Boost and utilising interest-only or part and part as a tool to borrow more and reduce monthly payments to ensure that mortgage payments are within budget.
We see these products as real tools to enable more consumers to access the housing market.
How are you helping to shape Gen H’s reputation or position in the market?
Physically being out and about, chatting to our corporate partners and brokers to understand what their clients are asking for, feeding that back through the ExCo and having a leadership position that allows me to help make decisions, not just give feedback.
Hosting The Exchange, a forum that brings together some of the industry’s key business leaders. Here, we can showcase our fantastic product and engineering capabilities, including voices from around the industry to understand what brokers care about most, and help shape the areas that Gen H moves into next.
What do you want brokers to think when they think of Gen H?
First and foremost, we want every broker who submits a case to Gen H to have a fantastic experience doing so.
Beyond that, we want brokers to think of us helping their clients who might not fit the mould of a typical homeowner. Perhaps that’s because they aren’t able to borrow enough to buy the house they want and make the most of being a first-time buyer from a stamp duty perspective, or perhaps because their circumstances are less traditional – maybe they are self-employed, residing in the UK on a visa, working their first contract straight out of education, or maybe all the above. We really aim to make homeownership accessible sooner, and we’ve seen this from Gen H data, where the average age of a first-time buyer utilising an income booster is 28, rather than the nationwide average of 34.
That we are not trapped in the mould of a legacy lender. We built our tech in-house, with constant broker feedback. This means brokers can save hours of telephone and email time to self-serve re-offers if rates reduce and utilise tech to make transacting easy, even for the most complicated cases.
How do you want consumers to see the lender?
We want consumers to know that there are mortgage lenders out there considering their real-life circumstances and doing everything they can to help give them the same access to homeownership as your standard PAYE customer.
We think it’s really important that the next generation of buyers and movers have got options that enable good outcomes for them, not just ones that are available. The amount of innovation in the mortgage market with lenders like Gen H and the products we’ve brought to market does mean that there are more options available – however, it has become a complex landscape to navigate, so doing so with the support of proper advice is really important.
Are there any areas Gen H is thinking of expanding into?
Very much so, but you will have to wait a little longer to hear about them.
