Ignore feedback at your peril

You quickly learn in this market that your own views of how your operation works and the service you provide are one thing, but the experience of advisers at the sharper end can be something entirely different.

That has been brought into sharp focus in a 12-month period which has been like nothing I’ve personally worked through before. Ups and downs, highs and lows, and everything in between have been on show, which makes feedback absolutely crucial and to be ignored at your peril.

Just recently we were listed in the Smart Money Mortgage Lender Benchmark survey for H2 last year and ‘scored’ across a number of categories – against our peer group – in terms of net promoter, ease of determining maximum loan amount, ease of determining product eligibility, relationship managers and communication.

This was the first Benchmark survey we had appeared in and see it as a real positive, given that it provides us with a great opportunity to be benchmarked against our peer group, to be listed alongside other top lenders who are also focused on serving their customers better, and it also gives us the opportunity to listen and learn from the advisers who use us, and to utilise this feedback to deliver improvements.

While it was good news to be ranked third in our listing of specialist lenders, there was clearly some work to do, most notably in another category - ‘Speed to process apps through to offer’.

Admittedly, and perhaps given everything that lenders have been working through since the pandemic hit, specifically in terms of staff working from home and the resource it took to deal with customer requests for mortgage payment deferrals, there was a hit to scores in this category right across the board.

As the Benchmark itself pointed out, speed to offer scores across all lenders dropped by 4.9%, the biggest drop the survey had seen since it was first introduced, and it’s clear this wasn’t unique to Foundation.

However, what would be unique to us, was the way we responded to this in order to improve the experience for advisers and their clients, but also to ensure that we as a lender were able to meet the growing demand for purchasing brought about post-lockdown and given a further boost by the stamp duty holiday.

The process began for us back in the Autumn last year, and it has taken on a number of strands right across our business in order to improve outcomes. It has resulted in streamlining the documents we request and changes to our core infrastructure system specifically in terms of the stage at which underwriters get involved.

It has also meant a number of resource-related changes, first up, in terms of our ability to process cases through to offer, and in terms of us contacting advisers in order to get the documentation we needed. We opened up a ‘Project Last Task’ arrangement in which we chased up the final documents required on a case; the reason being that many cases were just waiting for one ‘Last Task’ to be completed before we could move them on to offer.

That resulted in Foundation being able to double our daily offer rate throughout October and November, and it also meant we were giving those advisers and their clients a much better chance of completing before the stamp duty deadline in order that they might benefit from that particular saving.

This overall focus has also meant a significant increase in resources, in order to move cases through our process, but also in anticipation of the requirements placed upon us to complete cases – particularly over the next few months – but also in terms of what we have in our pipeline for the future.

That means we’ve added seven new experienced underwriters in January, and over the past few months a number of new underwriting assistants, processing team members and completions staff have joined; since September the new business team has grown by 45%.

Plus, we’ve now added five new sales staff, internal BDMs and some of our existing internal BDMs have moved on to become regional account managers. Again, it’s about understanding our process, the needs of the advisers who use us, and making sure we’re able to maintain the strongest of service standards, particularly at a time when the vast majority of staff are still working remotely.

All of the above has undoubtedly had a positive impact on our service; as I write this we’re taking just three minutes to answer broker desk calls, our DIP referral time is just one day, the maximum time we’ll take to review a full mortgage app is three days, and the maximum time for an underwriter review once all the requirements are met is also a day.

There is no doubt that the last six months in particular have been challenging, but they’ve also been rewarding in terms of our ability to service the business we get and to respond to the increase in demand we’ve had. The measures we’ve been able to put in place will last way beyond this period and will be amended and improved, especially as we continue to illicit feedback from our adviser partners. This is a conversation which does not stop and it’s vital we never stop reacting to the feedback we get.