Speaking to Specialist Lending Solutions, Hall said that OSB Group’s £1.9bn of lending reported in its latest half-year results was across 8,000 loans and there were around £1.5bn of product transfers across 7,000 loans.

“You look at those numbers in aggregate and that’s nearly £4.5bn of lending and over 15,000 borrowers that have engaged with us. All of them must have an experienced service and underwrite, so I think from that perspective, when we see the results come out, when you look at it holistically, then I think that’s a really positive performance and effort that a number of teams have put in,” he said.

He added that there was around £2bn growth in savings, which is around 133,000 accounts, which allowed the firm to continue funding specialist lending.

Looking at the growth figures, which were pegged at around 1.5% in the first half of the year, Hall said that OSB Group being supported across the UK property market “gives us so many more strings to our bow by which we can kind of generate that level of performance”.

He said it saw “good levels of interest and activity within the professional landlord segment” of the buy-to-let (BTL) market, which includes limited companies, houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) and purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA).

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Hall noted that within the BTL market, there were the “less professionalised landlord[s], the smaller landlord[s]”, who are “much more kind of rate-sensitive”, which explained why some may have left the sector, but that the “exodus of landlords” was “probably overstated”.

“I do think that you’ll get some parts of that market who are very focused on refinance, very rate-sensitive, and are a bit transactional around it. You get others who are a bit more acquisitive, which is the professional market, they have a significant proportion of maybe unencumbered or low mortgage properties, which gives them opportunity.

“We’re certainly seeing that very regularly in terms of professional landlords wanting to add to the portfolio; for instance, they can take a property and convert it towards an HMO or use it for student accommodation. We’re seeing that that part of [the] market will be much more active and use lenders like ourselves,” Hall said.

He said that the BTL space was a “significant segment” and had “very strong fundamentals” in the long term around rental growth and performance, but it was “going to grow slowly over periods of time, rather than return to a bit more of a booming market”.

 

Commercial, bridging, non-high street resi and housebuilding areas of interest

Hall said commercial investors investing in commercial property was a “strong direction” for the firm, along with bridging.

He said the firm was “always looking at” which commercial asset classes were “performing well”, noting that logistical parts of the market, like warehousing, were working well, along with office spaces and semi-commercial, so it would be looking to grow in those areas.

“That’s where a lot of investors are also looking to… operate. You’re getting those professional landlords or investors that are looking to spread their risk and look at maintaining or growing their yield, so we’re able to… support that,” he said.

He added that from a bridging perspective, regulated bridging in the residential space, such as downsizing, chain breaking had been “very successful”. Property conversion and refurbishment are also other areas that OSB Group is looking to support.

Another area is non-high street residential within the Precise brand, with Hall saying that the “credit cascade scoring and simple application process has worked really well in the first six months”.

“We want to continue to invest in that part of, particularly the Precise, business,” he said.

Through its Heritable, its residential development business, it would support small housebuilders, citing the new government’s “commitment and energy” around housebuilding.

 

New govt has delivered ‘injection of energy’ into property

Regarding the new government, Hall said that there had been an “injection of energy” into the property space.

He said earlier in the year at an event with industry leaders, they had asked for “energy, enthusiasm and a connected plan” from an upcoming government on housing and housebuilding, along with “balanced support” for the private rented sector (PRS) and homeownership.

“I think at the moment, what we’ve probably seen is, with the interest rate cut from the Bank of England, we’ve seen sparks of that starting to feed through, but it is still early stages.

“I don’t think yet that it’s got into a full, strong momentum. A lot of people are still saying: ‘Let’s wait and see how these policies come through’. I think there’s some possibility that there will be only limited base rate cuts in the second half of the year, so that may stall momentum a bit.

“But there is a lot of energy in the prime residential space at the moment, and more of a rate battle going on between some of those high street banks, and that typically will feed through into other parts of the market as well, so I think there’s definitely opportunities that will come through”, he noted.

 

OSB Group taking ‘proactive approach’ to product transfers

Hall said that OSB Group had taken a “proactive approach” to product transfers across the group in the last 12-18 months, which “will continue”.

“We invested in setting up capability within our sales team to actually support on that product transfer experience as well, so we do it hand in glove with [the] intermediary, and that’s been really well-valued,” he noted.

Hall said that with price competition in certain parts of the market, especially the less professionalised landlord space, that there may be more redemptions, but it reported over a billion in product transfers in the first six months of the year.

“We’ve got a really joined-up and connected product transfer process and a good offering for our customers. I think the one thing to emphasise is, as a group, we are about relationships.

“We are about service, and we’re definitely not into a churn model, so we want to grow through retaining strong relationships with our borrowers and with our intermediaries,” he said.

 

OSB Group looking to grow commercial and bridging sales team

OSB Group has a team of around 100 salespeople across its brands, which Hall said was a “significant investment”, but it recognises that a “critical part of our success is having those leading intermediary relationships”.

Hall said that in the last few years it had worked on the sales team organisation, and now has field-based, office-based and telephony business development managers (BDMs), along with live chat, “all connected together”.

“We’ve invested in what we call our high-net-worth team, so they deal with large borrowers that we already have on our balance sheet to make sure that we provide the service and future opportunities for them.

“We are growing our bridging team and our commercial team as well, so I think it’s a really substantial team that are experienced and has a very low level of turnover, which I think is key and shows that we’re doing the right thing,” Hall noted.