The horse meat scandal that has recently been in the news has had its up sides. This awful situation has seen the increase in consumers returning to their local butchers and many have reported significant increases in their sales. I know a butchers shop in Stow Bridge, West Norfolk has reported a 20% increase in sales since the scandal hit.
But the whole situation demonstrates how important it is to know who you are dealing with, whether that’s your choice of burger or your mortgage.
Our mortgage strategy focuses on local brokers and we define this as the counties of Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. By keeping our broker relationship local we can ensure that both we and our brokers know who they are dealing with.
This is not only important for the purposes of regulation, but pivotal to having a beneficial and meaningful business relationship. This enables us to dedicate our resources, focus and time on serving this exclusive group.
For example, we can look to develop products that meet the needs of our brokers and their clients; and have done this for brokers specialising in self-builds and those who focus on specific occupational areas.
Plus we’ve increased the size of our mortgage team to ensure the best standards of service. Furthermore, whilst the majority of our lending is in our local area we do accept applications for properties outside of this, as long as the broker is local.
Professional mortgage underwriting requires a detailed knowledge that goes beyond just lending criteria. We pride ourselves on offering ‘more human’ mortgages, meaning we underwrite each application personally and individually on its own merits.
Doing this in isolation of understanding the local area removes the necessary context to fully consider an application. Furthermore, it works on a practical level, if we need to we can hop in the car, visit the broker to discuss any areas of concern or even view the property in question.
This ensures we know our onions, and is often invaluable for some of the quirkier properties we might be asked to consider.
Ensuring that we know who we are dealing is a win-win all round. Appreciating the service levels and ethics of an organisation should be as strong a factor as price and fees when selecting a mortgage lender.
Paul Winter is CEO at Ipswich Building Society
