Understanding the rules of the game has always been a prerequisite of being at the forefront of your sector. Never has this principle been more relevant than now as the spectre of regulation looms high over the short-term funding market.
Payday loans and the like have again brought the prospect of the regulator getting its claws into every aspect of consumer and commercial funding over time. Being prepared for the inevitable is an important part of every businesses long-term plans and the short-term funding market is one that cannot ignore the potential for such a regime.
Capital Bridging Finance is one of a growing number of short-term funders who are adapting their internal practices as they learn more about what the market demands and ensuring that those demands are managed in an ethical, prudent and just as importantly, an informed way.
It is vital that for the sustained growth of those individual companies and for the sector as a whole, that this increased resource is well trained in the ethics of the industry and how such as the ASTL Charter is portrayed to their brokers and clients.
It would be interesting to know how many of the staff of the ASTL member firms know or are even aware of the existence of the six elements of the charter.
My last statement is at the core of what I am writing about. If our people do not know what the fundamentals are, about how we go about our business, then it is not surprising that we still come in for criticism about some of our practices.
We are in the process of seeking regulated permissions for short-term mortgage lending. Many of you will have experienced the challenges that the submission process puts the business through.
What we learnt from those challenges is that if we are to see the business benefit from the new status then the quality of training that our staff have in areas such as:
– Client development and relationship management including better use of CRM data
– Internal communications
– Product pricing and design
– Time management
– Fraud detection.
All stakeholders in the funding process (lenders, valuers, solicitors, distributors and brokers) need to address their training programmes and ensure that they are constantly improving and evolving and result in a more robust proposition. Such efforts should ensure that they can maintain their competitive advantage.
I started the piece by saying that we need to know the rules to win. It is vital that if we are to continue to grow and retain the confidence of our clients then all our staff need to be part of a training programme that fully supports every department of our business.
The process starts with recruiting quality staff who, from the outset (and that is at the interview not during the second week on the job) understand the importance we place on training and their role in our plans to continue to grow our business and enhance our reputation as an ethical and prudent lender.
Our quality of coaching will be the barometer by which we are judged and it will be the results that our coaching produces that will determine who remains at the top of their game when the big boys return, as they will.
Get it right in-house and you can then go and spread the word confident that all your team know what the game plan is… and the rationale behind it. The education of our staff has to remain one of the core elements of our proposition.
