Kensington launches brand refresh and sees business up 60% – exclusive

The lender also broke through the £1bn lending barrier in the 12-month spell to the end of August and expects later-life lending to be a key growth market.

It said the growth and rebrand followed continued product and personnel investment throughout the year and that it was continuing to integrate more data to support its manual underwriting.

The rebrand also includes a website refresh following consultation with brokers, with key elements such as lending criteria and calculators more prominent and accessible.

Integrating data

Speaking at the launch, Kensington Mortgages CEO Mark Arnold (pictured) told Specialist Lending Solutions that the lender had focused on maintaining service quality for brokers.

“We’ve got the proposition right with the buy-to-let offer complementing the residential offering being particularly important,” he said.

“We want to make sure we can stand behind the brand and that we have a proposition that delivers and can work.”

Arnold added that the lender wanted to continue its approach to manual underwriting as it evolved its specialist offerings, but that it was keen to make better use of data in administration and background processes.

“Technology is changing the market and there are so many sources of data to help make decisions,” he continued.

“We get data to the point where the underwriter can make a decision. We use services that extract the data and for example use bots to do basic administration tasks.

“And we’re making a big investment of £5m in the next couple of years to continue that,” he added.

Specialist market growing 20-30%

Kensington said the rebrand is aimed at highlighting its philosophy to look beyond the surface to find the right solutions for borrowers while using ‘head and heart’ rather than computer alogrithms to make decisions.

New business director Craig McKinlay said after its 60% annual growth in the three months to September the lender was looking to continue growing at around 25% a year for the foreseeable future.

“The specialist sector is growing around 20-30% a year because so many people are falling out of the high street lenders approach,” McKinlay said.

“Most of what we do isn’t credit adversity, its complex incomes such as being self-employed with multiple incomes.”

He also acknowledged that competition was increasing in the specialist sector and that borrowers were less concerned with price.

“There’s been a lot of new entrants and although there are higher costs, its attractive because there are higher margins,” he said.

“For our part of the market its less about product rate and more about certainty and service – can you do it and how well?”

Shared ownership possibility

The relaunch of the buy-to-let offering earlier in the year has been a key source of growth for Kensington, with the focus on limited company lending seeing a steady stream of activity, McKinlay said.

While this is likely to be one area of growth despite the overall sluggish buy-to-let market, later-life lending is also seen as another big opportunity, as is first-time buyers and replacing Help to Buy.

“There’s a couple of interesting ideas from the private sector mooted,” McKinlay said.

“Shared ownership on any house could be interesting because shared ownership is very niche at the moment.

“We would be happy to lend on that,” he added.