As you might expect from a man who started his career on a building site, Keith Astill is no stranger to hard graft. Whether hod-carrying or non-conforming lending is the harder game is a matter of debate, but here are certainly parallels between them, as he explains: “Both roles required strong team work, commitment and hard work to get the job done. And there was always a great deal of satisfaction in the completed product.”
Astill admits hod-carrying was not his first choice of career upon leaving school, but in retrospect it taught him some important basics of team building which hold true wherever you are. He continues: “The similarity with UCB is that it is quite a small company and we all have our own roles to fulfil. If you do not do your job correctly then it is difficult for other people to do theirs. A good working ethos is the same whether you are working on a building site or working in an office.”
Astill soon donned a white collar and left the building site to join an insurance company called Equity and Law. But he insists that his hard-working ethos survived the transition. “The building site was getting a bit cold,” he jokes. “I started working for an insurance company and after a few years the plan was to go to university but I ended up joining Nationwide and have been there ever since.”
After joining as a management trainee in High Wycombe in 1978 he progressed through many roles, culminating in an area management position in the west of England, before moving to head office to work in human resources.
“The appointment was for a role as head of corporate personnel and included overseeing matters as diverse as the union relationship and health and safety. Then only last April I was given the opportunity to come back to working with some of the things I started off my career at Nationwide looking at. So in a way I have come full circle. Again, dealing with the mortgage broker is very much part and parcel of what I do,” he says.
Exciting times
Astill explains that his move to the role of managing director of UCB Homeloans, a subsidiary of Nationwide, could not have come at a more exciting time because the market is in a state of flux. He says: “We are at a stage post-regulation where rates and procuration fees for prime and buy-to-let products are being squeezed more and more. More major lenders see moving into sub-prime as a major growth area, while many of the smaller lenders are struggling to stay in business. We are in a state of flux at the moment and we need to gear ourselves up for some major changes.
Research by UCB has indicated that out of 1334 intermediaries questioned, 55% predict there to be a drop in the number of buy-to-let purchases this year compared with 2004. If this is correct it will be the first year since the sector took off eight years ago in which the number of buy to let mortgages has fallen.
“In terms of buy to let, more speculative investors have clearly been put off by the flattened housing market. But those that are in it for the long haul are continuing to invest,” he says.
But will the introduction of self-invested pension plans (SIPPs) into the property arena give the market that much needed boost? Another UCB study conducted among 1236 mortgage intermediaries showed that almost half (46%) already own buy-to-let property themselves with two-thirds of them (68%) claiming they would consider putting buy-to-let property into a SIPP when it becomes possible next year.
“We predict their introduction will increase the market by around 15% as existing buy-to-let landlords look to put residential buy to let into a SIPP,” he says. “This is based on the enquiries we are getting through at the moment. There are disadvantages as far as flexibility is concerned but it is still likely their introduction will lead to a small boost in the market.”
Astill also insists that, all the bad publicity notwithstanding, he has welcomed the positive feedback about lenders from the Financial Services Authority following its review into self-certification.
“UCB is one of the original self-certification lenders. What we do, we do well and it helps people who do not have an ongoing employer over a long period of time. Self-certification should not be for people trying to get a higher number of income multiples than a conventional product would allow for, but for those who are self-employed and cannot provide proof of income in the normal way. The introduction of fast-track mortgages has seen a lot of business move away from self-certification and along this route,” he says.
He is passionate about making sure it is not a pseudonym for people who fabricate income evidence. “If it becomes that, it does not do industry brokers or consumers any favours at all. There are also potential dangers of fast track if people overextend themselves. Fundamentally and from a regulatory perspective we must make an assessment on the basis of people’s ability to service a loan.”
Astill explains UCB did well out of the boom a few years ago but the negative publicity coupled with other lenders moving into the market has meant times were becoming increasingly difficult for smaller lenders.
“We have a decreasing share of a decreasing market,” he admits. “Lenders such as BM Solutions and GMAC-RFC have marketed aggressively in this area and with a highly developed online proposition. They have deployed technology to good effect, giving brokers good easy access to their products. However, online systems are not for everyone and there are problems. We need to make it easy for people to use UCB and one of the ways we can do that is with a web-based proposition.”
At the moment UCB is totally paper-based and yet it still manages to offer a two-hour turnaround. Astill explains people like the personal service and the ability to talk to the underwriter but confesses that an online proposition should be ready to launch in the new year.
“We need to get a decision in principle system online because this is how brokers want to do business these days,” he says. “We want to develop an online web solution for our intermediaries and allow people to populate forms using Trigold or Mortgage Brain. At the moment we just do not offer the ability for people to transact business online.
“We are late because we have been investing a lot in our internal systems here at UCB. Since Mortgage Day we have been getting the internal platform laid down and what we want to do now is make that same level of platform available to the broking community.”
While Astill is committed to keeping the personal approach that has served the business in such good stead in the past at the forefront of the operation, he also intends develop an easy-to-use online alternative to the paper-based route.
Self-certification mortgages may be decreasing and the buy-to-let market may be in need of an urgent intravenous SIPP, but with Astill at the helm one would expect to see UCB become a regular lender on consumers’ key facts illustrations.
