The success of plans to increase market share, boost sales and enquiries and make changes to back office support and front-end service can all be assessed against full-year results to see if the investment was worthwhile.
This week our experts talk about how this year’s business volumes compare to last year, the operations key to their businesses in 2015 and their strategies for 2016.
John Phillips, national operations director of Just Mortgages, attributes the growth of its mortgage business, the improved productivity of its brokers and explains how he plans to retain customers and build on growth in 2016.
Simon Chalk, technical manager, equity release, at Age Partnership, discusses the company’s marketing spend and how this built their enquiry numbers.
Mark Harris, chief executive of SPF Private Clients, says challenger banks’ willingness to lend and its own back office support has driven growth in mortgage sales.
John Phillips is national operations director of mortgage and protection brokerage Just Mortgages
Since I joined the company in June, we have been a lot more focussed on productivity ensuring the brokers are focussing on the right customers who really want to buy a property.
The success of this strategy can be clearly seen in our results. We are hoping to achieve 10% growth in submitted mortgage business by the end of the year, which will be an increase of 10% in turnover on last year’s full results.
We are having a very strong end to the year and expect to have a record year for both income and profit achieving more success for the financial services division than has ever achieved before.
We have put in place a solid plan for our financial services division and increased the amount of broker training and development we are doing. As a result of our strategy we expect 2016 to be an even more successful year. In the last month we have already launched a new customer servicing division to contact customers on completion and offer a full financial review every year so that we keep the customer for life.
This week we launched a dedicated new-homes division with 10 brokers working closely with both national and local house builders to provide finance to people who want to buy a new home.
Across Just Mortgages we are already on target to increase the number of mortgage and protection brokers we have from 115 to 130 by the end of this year and increase this again to 140 by the end of next year.
Simon Chalk is technical manager, equity release, at Age Partnership
It’s a been a great year for Age Partnership. Our sales in equity release rose by 15.4% between Q1 and Q3 compared to last year with business at the end of December forecast to be 20% up on 2014. Some of that success can be attributed to overall market growth. The whole sector is performing really well but we’ve managed to outperform our market threefold. Our individual success can be largely attributed to our heavy investment in marketing, at about £4m to £5m a year.
We are running prime-time TV adverts which are shown in key slots between Emmerdale and Coronation Street. This hasn’t been a cheap investment but has paid dividends by bringing in the enquiries which the team has been successful in converting.
We have a phenomenal front office operation which is run by market intelligence. It monitors every single pound in the business so we can monitor the return on our investment.
We started running the campaign in January last year, tentatively at first, then doubled the spend on it this year. Developing a face-to-face propostion, after previously being purely telephone-based, has also driven up sales giving equity release borrowers more ways to deal with us. If you want to be a challenger for the number one spot, two sales channels helps. To continue this momentum next year we have plans to double our face-to-face advisers to extend our reach even wider.
Mark Harris is chief executive of SPF Private Clients
We are on track to end the year with revenues some 25% higher on last year. This will filter through to higher profits, even allowing for the investment we have made in the business in 2015.
It has been a good year as we continue to grow and recruit to take advantage of all the opportunities that have arisen. In some ways the last thing we need is more introducers. The ongoing task is to ensure we are looking after the ones we have and giving them the best possible service.
We are pretty confident about next year as we have a solid base on which to build. We have restructured our back office support, have more people, the market is better and remortgaging has picked up as borrowers become more concerned about a rate rise. More lenders are coming into the intermediary space – we are now working with HSBC, for example – and the challenger banks are keen to make an impact so there is more capacity in the market. This has helped growth this year and should also have a positive impact next year.
There have been negatives with the lack of interest-only lending and MMR slowing things down. But when you talk to lenders about the volume of business they want to do next year it looks encouraging and further challenges such as the Mortgage Credit Directive are likely to create more opportunities for brokers, with borrowers increasingly requiring good quality advice.
