FR: This year Y3S Group has reported exponential growth – what factors do you feel have influenced this?
We have tried to invest heavily in our infrastructure from computer systems to offices to staff training, just ahead of the natural growth curve of the industries in which we are involved. We only accept business from intermediaries and with both secured loans and bridging loans becoming an ever popular choice for intermediaries struggling to arrange mainstream finance, many specialist brokers are starting to boom once again.
FR: What have been your highlights over the last 12 months at Y3S?
It’s been a very busy year. We’ve won a couple of industry awards and we featured in Wales’ Fast Growth 50 listings for the 6th time in 12 years. We launched our industry magazine Loans insider in February, our smartphone app in March, increased our staff numbers from 29 to 42, registered the 5,000th user to our sourcing system and moved into new offices which can accommodate up to 100 staff. In September we launched our integrated remortgage comparison system. The absolute highlight of the year was last month learning that we’d achieved 132% year-on-year increase in net profit to £420,000 Let’s face it, it makes the grafting worthwhile. The low point of the year was the death of industry legend David Johnson, our dear friend and mentor.
FR: Technology is constantly improving to support brokers and lenders alike – tell us more about miLoan, your loan sourcing software, and how it benefits brokers.
Technology is the key to the future of this industry: miLoan is a secured loan sourcing system designed for an intermediary to get quick accurate quotations for their client. It works because it’s very simple to use and solves an age old problem for intermediaries by stripping out the layers of confusion and delay in getting secured loan quotes from master brokers. It costs nothing to use and pays large introduction fees to its broker-users. In two and a half years it has become the market leader and the benchmark for developers of similar systems. Nearly 6,000 of the 10,000 mortgage brokers in the UK have signed-up. We built miLoan early in the re-birth of the market so that we’d have several years of development experience on anyone else.
FR: What challenges do you feel are most affecting intermediaries in the current market, and how do you aim to make their lives easier at Y3S?
The lack of availability of mortgage finance to those who want to stay on interest-only mortgages, or have a bit of adverse credit or those who do not have three payslips or three years accounts is still all too apparent. Their mortgage brokers are forced to look for solutions elsewhere or lose the business, so they come to specialist brokers like Y3S. We work very hard to make it as simple as possible for mortgage brokers to use our services. We hold their hands at every step and jump with them. The main challenge is education. There are huge numbers of mortgage brokers and IFAs to educate and with a relatively small number of secured loan and bridging finance brokers it’s not always easy to ensure everyone has the message. Once we get them on board though, we move mountains to ensure they stay with us.
FR: What is your prediction for the secured loans industry for 2014 and beyond?
Unless there is a cataclysmic world financial event (in which case we’re all screwed anyway) it’s a pretty safe bet to say that it’s only going one way for the foreseeable future. The customer demand is there, the intermediaries are slowly coming back to second charges and in terms of numbers of introductions, we are still really only scratching the surface of what is actually available to us. There is a £1bn+ industry out there waiting to be built, and we’re at the front of the queue, trowels in hand.
FR: If you weren’t in the financial services industry, what would you be doing?
In a perfect world, I’d be a pilot or a racing driver. Not original I know, but no matter how hard I try to kick the habit, I am a petrol-head at heart, and always will be. It doesn’t even matter about the type of vehicle; I get equally as excited driving a petrol lawn mower as I do a fast car. I also like making hybrid contraptions: my most recent success was fitting a lawnmower engine to a mountain bike!
