The big story of 2012 was mutuals taking a bigger share of the market. The Building Societies Association (BSA) reported that building societies and other mutuals accounted for 22% of gross mortgage lending for the year.

So why the sudden surge from the mutual sector?

I believe that one of the reasons is that we are closer to our customers. We have the advantage of being able to look at every case individually, to assess it’s feasibility, rather than the automated credit-scoring approach.

We are not compromising quality with this approach, the simple rules of underwriting still apply. Can they pay? Will they pay? Is the property suitable security? But there are lots of high quality borrowers out there that don’t fit the credit-scoring boxes.

A great example of where this has worked was a customer who converted an old Methodist church into four cottage-style properties.

We lent to them as individuals and took two years self-employed accounts into consideration.

They had done one development project before. There were two obvious risks to the case that other lenders were not prepared to try and mitigate: income and security.

However, because we had taken the time to evaluate their situation we were able to help and are pleased to say all properties were converted and successfully sold. The customers have in fact just come back to us for a second development in Bristol.

There seems to be a growing recognition in the industry that big is not always best.

Mortgages are becoming increasingly less straight-forward, so the flexible approach to underwriting seems to be the way forward and long may the big boys say no.

Roger Knight is lending manager at Newbury Building Society