Earlier this week, Gen H, which launched in 2019 and opened to the broker market in 2021, confirmed that it would become an intermediary-only lender.
Speaking to this publication, Dockar (pictured), chief commercial officer (CCO) at Gen H, said that the firm wanted to be “more proposition-led”, and 90 per cent of growth in lending came from the broker channel.
He explained: “We are genuinely utterly mission-led. Our focus is to get more people into homeownership.
“We want to make the most of our resources to make that happen, that is absolutely central to how we operate. This year, we want to really focus on delivering more and more propositions to the markets.”
“We love being there direct for our customers, but it’s more important that we get propositions out there that scale and have an impact and to double-down on the broker channel is the logical way of doing it,” he added.
Additional propositions will focus on affordability
Dockar said that the change would “significantly reduce” the amount of work for the product and technical teams to “deliver a new proposition to market”.
“What that then does is then that means you can then repivot with the organisation around it, so we’ve got these amazing advisers who are offering brilliant mortgage advice, and we can now pivot them and pitch them towards supporting customers and brokers more directly,” he noted.
Dockar said that additions to its proposition would be around affordability enhancement, for instance, looking at credit commitments, long-term fixed rates and those with imperfect credit history, including those who may not have been in the UK for very long.
He said that, while some tools will remain for customers online, the pivot will mean that it can focus on “better tooling for brokers”, pointing to the streamlining of its affordability calculator.
Gen H said that most of its conveyancing service came from brokers, and the change to intermediary-only lender wouldn’t make much difference to the service. He added that one in three of its first-time buyers were using the service.
2024 set to be a year of growth
Dockar said that, in the three months to the end of March, the lender was on track to do more mortgage approvals with brokers than it did in the whole of 2022.
He continued on to say that in January, Gen H would have lent enough to enter the top 20 lender rankings.
Dockar added that the company has reported a record level of booster deals in February, and that income boosters were more popular than its deposit boosters by 15 to one.
He noted that 92 per cent of customers who use boosters couldn’t have got a mortgage elsewhere.
He said that it was looking to grow its broker panel further, with two networks to be onboarded this year.
Dockar said that regarding the team it had a small field-based team of business development managers (BDMs) who cover South, Central and North England and then backed up by broker specialists.
When asked whether it would be looking to recruit more BDMs or broker-facing staff, he said the firm “absolutely wouldn’t rule it out.”
“We think we’ve got the right size team for the growth we need, but you never can tell me, for some of the propositions we may need to recruit more,” he said.
