FR: Just Mortgages recently launched a new client servicing division – why is this service important and how will it help both brokers and consumers?
Clients should never be a one hit wonder; we need to look after them for the long term in order to have a relationship for life. This is what our client servicing division has been set up to achieve, to follow up with the client on a regular basis and help to create an ongoing relationship. This should benefit the customer so that they have the peace of mind of knowing that their mortgage and protection needs are always looked after and they always have someone they can come back to – regardless of whether the initial broker that they saw is still with the company or not.
Our client servicing department will help to create a relationship with the client and the Just Mortgages brand not just the broker so they know they will be looked after. With this aim, qualified advisers from our client servicing division will contact clients on completion of a loan, to review how happy they have been and discuss if they have any protection needs that were overlooked.
We will contact them again on an annual basis to offer each client a full, financial review, finally we will contact the client again five months prior to the end of their tied in period with a lender, to offer an additional review of their individual circumstances and establish the best steps for them now. At each of these times the client will be able to meet with their original broker, a new broker or deal with the qualified broker on the phone.
FR: What problems are first-time buyers facing in the current climate and how do you think they can be tackled?
The biggest problems facing first time buyers are saving for a deposit and meeting affordability requirements.
Competition for properties is fierce at the moment and I have noticed a lot more properties being put up for sale as open houses, where people put in sealed bids, which will very often disadvantage first time buyers who may not be able to put in the very highest bids.
In fairness to the government, the two Help to Buy schemes have been very helpful and it would be good to keep both of these going. The government and the mortgage market have a difficult balance to strike between buy-to-let and first time buyers; we can curb the buy-to-let market a little but we need to get the right balance between the needs of those who want or need to rent and those who want to buy.
FR: What changes do you expect to see in the mortgage market in the next 12 months?
Property prices will continue to rise as there is not enough property coming to market. We have an ever-aging population who would love to downsize but have nothing to downsize to. In fact we are seeing less property available year on year which is an alarming trend and we could do with more initiatives to encourage house building to try to counteract this.
Despite rising property prices, I don’t believe interest rates will rise potentially for a couple of years yet as the wider economic factors are too unstable.
I think that lending will remain at approximately £210 billion which is what I expect it to be both this year and next.
FR: Have you got any big plans or exciting news coming up that you can tell us about?
Other than the launch of our client servicing division we have also just launched a specialist new homes division, this has launched with ten staff and will deal with everything from ten unit developments upwards. Just Mortgages has always given advice on new home mortgages but the demand for specialist new homes advice has increased to such an extent that we now need a dedicated division to offer specialist advice to everyone who needs it.
Our other big plans are our strategies to grow every division of the business. We had 115 mortgage advisers in Just Mortgages place in Spicer Haart estate agency branches in September and we are on target to increase this to 130 by the end of this year, 140 by the end of next year and 150 by 2017.
Even in our new divisions we intend to dramatically increase the number of brokers. We aim to double the number of staff in our new homes division while in our client servicing division we want to increase the number of qualified brokers from five to thirty over the next three to four years.
We have a couple of other big announcements that we cannot mention yet, but which we are hoping to announce before the end of the year.
FR: If you weren’t in the financial services industry, what would you be doing?
I would be a ski instructor, probably in Whistler in Canada as it’s possibly the finest ski resort in the world.
