Retailers suffered a mediocre Christmas, especially if their presence was limited to the High Street. Consumer confidence remains low, house prices went backwards in the last year and politics today (i.e. the thing that is supposed to make it all go away) is more about PR than it is policy.
However, when I say that I do have high hopes for 2013 and that Kent Reliance and our introducer partners should be looking forward to strong performance this year. Does that mean then that I am brave, naive or foolish?
Whilst the Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) is demonstrably impacting the mortgage market, the impact has only been to further benefit the mainstream borrower looking for a simple mortgage from the top six lenders.
Beyond that, whilst there has been some movement in buy-to-let rates, the specialist market is largely untouched by FLS and underserved by volume lenders, so there is clear opportunity (and demand) for smaller lenders to step into this space.
Kent Reliance benefits from having much better access to capital than many small lenders. That capital isn’t free and we won’t always be the cheapest in town, but we can promise to maintain a substantial lending appetite coupled with a pragmatic underwriting approach, both of which continue to be very much in demand.
So that’s the plan, but then that was the plan last year, and we all know that smaller lenders can suffer from service issues and I can’t deny that Kent Reliance had this experience.
But we enter 2013 with a much improved service position, a strong desire to lend and a growing recognition from both our sales and underwriting teams that there are some really high quality lending opportunities coming our way.
