This blog is inspired by a couple of things that I experienced in the run up to Christmas, specifically the Sports Personality of the Year award (aka SPOTY) and the Mortgage Market Review (MMR) paper – subjects not often commented upon simultaneously.
Firstly, the SPOTY.
As a sports mad child, I recall looking forward to Frank Bough and David Coleman, Des Lynam even, presenting a programme that actually contained a significant amount of sporting content.
It had a two-hour slot on a Sunday in December and was hallowed viewing. It was a documentary of the sporting year.
Roll forward to 2011.
Sunday is now Thursday. There’s more Coldplay than there is sporting content. There are fireworks, flames and phone votes. The coverage of the actual sporting stories of the year is no more than cursory.
It was more X Factor than sport, with the only redeeming feature being an endearingly humble speech by Mark Cavendish, the winner.
So, the old was definitely better than the new for SPOTY.
Compare, however, to the MMR – a meaty tome, with one comment in there that, for me, sums up why it all went a bit pear shaped in 2007/08: “Mortgages…should only be advanced where there is a reasonable expectation that the customer can repay…”.
As a mutual, the concept of lending to someone who you don’t believe will repay you is inconceivable.
Our model, in which our primary responsibility is to members rather than shareholders, has meant that we have always taken the view that getting repaid matters – after all, it is members’ money we are lending.
In that sense, having this sort of message front and centre of the MMR supports the model that we’ve been living by for years.
However the fact that it needed to be said suggests that not everyone lived by this rule.
So, while the old version of SPOTY is something I’d love to see, I’m very happy to see the new world of mortgage lending, as set out in the MMR.
John Eastgate is sales and marketing director at Saffron Building Society
