The change in Vida’s model comes after a strategic review of its business, which was launched in October this year.
The intermediary relationship team within the hub will be led by Helen Cawthra and will be supported by national account managers who will work with the lender’s main partners to improve its intermediary proposition and delivery.
Cawthra has worked at Vida for around a year as a corporate sales manager and before that held roles at Accord Mortgages, Leeds Building Society and Lloyds Banking Group.
Speaking to Mortgage Solutions, Vida’s chief executive Anth Mooney (pictured) said that the V-Hub “allows us to bring together all of our intermediary-facing teams with a clear focus on providing quick access to decision makers”.
He said that this meant that it had brought together its field sales, telephony business development management team and internal mortgage operation into one team.
“We’re moving away from that traditional field sales-led model to a new engagement-centred model, which is focused on responding to intermediary needs, rather than telling them what we think they should be doing.”
Mooney said that Vida had spent a lot of time talking to intermediary partners over the last 18 months about what they prize in placing complex cases and the “overwhelming answer that we got back was that access to decision makers really trumps everything else.”
He noted that the important thing for brokers looking to place specialist cases was certainty that a case would be accepted, so they are not wasting their own, the customers’ or the lenders’ time.
“With that in mind, we’ve reviewed our model and thought really hard about the way that we face-off to our intermediary partners and we’ve decided to move to a model that is far more decision-centric.”
Mooney added that it was crucial to adopt a model that combined technological capability and “data-driven decision making” with the “ability to get the intermediary connected into our most experienced underwriters”.
He said: “Brokers, particularly in the specialist market, don’t need to be sold to, they don’t want to be sold to, they are the experts. They know what they need. They know how to source mortgage products and solutions for their customers.
“Our job as a lender is to give them access to those products and provide them with a service that they can rely on and a service that supports them in helping more customers to find solutions,” he noted.
Mooney said: “The message is that we are focused on setting up our business up for success and for growth, and to continue to build on the strong relationships that we have. The changes that we’ve made are to strengthen those relationships and strengthen our proposition, not in any way to weaken the intermediary relationships that we have.”
Mooney said its entire business model was “based on the strength of those relationships”.
“This is just the latest step in investing in our capability, investing in our model, to give them [brokers] what they’ve told us they would like to see,” he noted.
He confirmed that there were some redundancies in the business, with their last day at the firm taking place earlier this week.
Mooney did not confirm an exact number, noting that in some cases the firm had managed to place individuals in roles with partners or found new roles within the business.
He said that a collective consultation process was triggered because more than 20 individuals are impacted.
Residential and buy-to-let will be ‘strategic focus’
Mooney said that the strategic review would not impact its product proposition in the short term, noting that its “strategic focus” in the next few years would be on the residential and buy-to-let sectors.
He added that any “new developments” would be focused on those two areas, hinting that there were some in the pipeline for next year.
“There will be some pressure on the mortgage market next year, but I think the fundamentals of the specialist mortgage market remain strong,” Mooney commented.
He added that there had been a lot of talk about the “demise of the buy-to-let market”, but such claims had been “happening for as long as I can remember”.
Mooney said: “The buy-to-let market has proven to be very resilient over a number of years despite regulatory and taxation changes. There will be some pressure on landlords next year, especially around returns and yields, but the specialist lending market is driven through remortgaging and specialist property types. We see strong demand for both of those things looking forward.”
‘We see our future in the medium term as a bank’
Regarding its plans to become an authorised bank, Mooney said that it was about to share its regulatory business plan with the Prudential Regulatory Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority.
He said that it planned to submit a full application during 2023, and, assuming the authorisation process takes 18 to 24 months, Vida would be ready to accept retail deposits in 2024.
However, Mooney warned that “being absolutely specific around a date is very hard” and both “dangerous and difficult”.
Mooney continued: “The thing that I would note is that many of the newly authorised banks in recent years have been startups, in fact almost all of them.
“We aren’t in that position, we’re a trading entity, we’ve been around for six years, and we are well capitalised and profitable. We have much of the infrastructure already in place that you would expect to see in a bank.”
He added that since he joined as CEO three years ago, the company had recruited an almost entirely new executive team and senior management team who have “deep expertise in operating regulated UK banks”.
“We’re not turning up, you know, with a business idea and a dream. We’re turning up with a functioning business and asking for their support in terms of authorisation.”
Mooney continued that the previous two years had been “incredibly disjointed” for non-bank lenders as there had been periods where the wholesale funding markets had been “all but closed”.
He said: “We see our future in the medium term as a bank. The application process is on the way and really that’s just to give us the opportunity to compete more effectively with the larger banks and specialist lenders.
“Having access to retail funding in a benign interest rate environment is less important. In a rising interest rate environment, the importance of it to a specialist lender who wants to grow just becomes more pronounced.”
‘A robust specialist lending market in the years ahead’
Mooney said that over the past four or five weeks, he had seen mortgage pricing and swap rates start to settle, with downward repricing starting to take place.
“I think that looks set to continue. You always get strong competition in the spring and we will see some lower prices post-Christmas.”
He added: “The market will be less strong next year in terms of demand than it has been this year but from our point of view we will deliver record lending this year. We will still see a robust specialist lending market in the years ahead.”
Mooney said he hoped that it had seen a peak in mortgage pricing and in swap rates, which could bode well for potential customers.
“In terms of mortgage pricing, that should allow more customers to continue to engage and secure the properties that they’re after. So, we are not stupidly optimistic about the market, but nor are we desperately depressed about its prospects.”
