"As the lifetime mortgage market continues to grow, it is vital the products available do too."
FR: Your current job title is head of intermediary sales – what does your day-to-day role involve and what do you think will be the key issues affecting intermediaries in 2018?
My role is to oversee and implement our intermediary distribution strategies. Every day is different, I currently split my time between our head office in Brighton, our London office and on the road meeting our advisers. My time in the office is spent on developing our product offering and working with our great team of sales and service specialists to ensure that the OneFamily products and proposition is appealing to advisers.
I am fortunate that with my role I get to travel all over the county to meet with advisers face-to-face and talk to them about our lifetime mortgage and life insurance products, answering the questions they may have, getting their views on the market, and understanding how we can help them meet the needs of their clients.
With regards to the key issues affecting intermediaries in 2018, from a lending perspective it will be making sure that complete advice is given to clients, between residential mortgages, retirement interest-only mortgages and lifetime mortgages. As more products come on to the market, advice needs to be joined up to cover all options.
FR: What are OneFamily’s main aims or focuses in 2018? Do you have any exciting news or plans you can tell us about?
We are focused on developing new, innovative products to ensure that we can offer advisers more products to suit the changing needs of their clients. As the lifetime mortgage market continues to grow, it is vital the products available do too. We know that the reasons for taking a lifetime mortgage are increasingly varied and as such we need to ensure that our products suit different homeowner’s lifestyles and needs.
We work together with our advisers to get their insight on the market and using this and our in-house team, we develop products. It’s a bit early to talk in detail currently, but watch this space for more product news coming soon.
FR: How do you see technology continuing to evolve in the mortgage market and what are some of the positive and negative impacts you see of emerging tech?
All of our lifetime mortgages applications are completed via our online portal. We do this for two reasons; one being that it speeds up the process when documents are sent back and forth in the post, the other is so that nothing gets lost and advisers know at exactly which stage the application is at. For us it is important that we can offer a seamless process for advisers. We expect to see more digital platforms come onto the market and more companies going paperless.
New technology is a positive in that it helps streamline and speed up processes but we are always conscious that technology never takes away from good, personal customer service either on the phone or face-to-face. Working alongside our online portal are dedicated sales and underwriting teams that are available every step of the way.
FR: How will the lifetime mortgage market continue to evolve and what changes would you like to see?
Lifetime mortgages are key to helping people fund their retirement and will play an increasingly mainstream role in financial planning for later years. With pensions savings needing to go further than ever, they provide homeowners with a cost-effective way to fund their later years or pay off debts or an interest only mortgage which they would otherwise be stuck with into retirement.
