As HSBC releases its annual results Michelle Andrews, head of buying a home at HSBC UK, reflects on a successful year for the banking giant.
The year started with the third national lockdown and ended with an increase in the Bank of England’s Base Rate, and there was much that happened in between.
While many of us got used to working from home, and are now re-acclimatising to spending time back in the office, I am proud to say, in 2021, the HSBC UK Buying A Home team has adapted extremely well to the evolving landscape to ensure continuation of service during some of the busiest periods we have ever seen in the 40+ years we have been a mortgage provider.
It has been a real team effort, with everyone playing their part in a successful year, both customer-facing colleagues and those in the background.
We have seen our team of BDMs on Zoom and on the road supporting our broker networks, our policy-makers and underwriters making sure our policies are reflecting what is going on in the world and applying them to applications, whilst not forgetting those in the product team who have ensured our mortgage rates are great value across all resi and BTL LTVs, including launching our first sub-1% mortgage rate in over five years.
We have today (22 Feb) unveiled our annual results, covering 2021. We are proud to have continued to support the housing market and individuals with their aspirations to create a home, and last year we helped over 28,000 first time buyers onto the housing ladder.
I remember buying my first home and getting the keys was such a fantastic feeling, and I am pleased we have been able to help so many buy their first home and experience that feeling for themselves.
While our average LTV for first-time buyers has lowered from 81% in 2020 to 77% in 2021, we proudly signed up to the Government’s Mortgage Guarantee Scheme. Alongside the Stamp Duty Land Tax relief (Stamp Duty Holiday), these initiatives helped keep the housing market moving.
Throughout the pandemic we have been there to support the housing market and those who want to get onto the property ladder, move up, or remortgage with us.
Our new Digital Decision In Principle did just that by streamlining and speeding up the decision-making process, providing an instant response. We also improved our processes to make it easier for non-HSBC customers to get a mortgage with us, which was a small but important step.
While we want to attract new people to HSBC UK, it is vitally important to recognise those who currently have a mortgage with us.
The introduction of differential pricing this year now means we can shape our mortgage offers to provide specific rates for the different types of borrowing, including providing existing customers with their own rates, often lower than for new customers recognising that relationship.
In 2021, we have continued to build broker relationships, more than doubling the number of brokers networks who have access to our mortgages from 277 at the end of 2020 to 640 at the end of the year, and added the equivalent of 30 full-time colleagues to the Intermediaries team. We have handled over 400,000 broker calls and live chat conversations throughout another lockdown year. We are still onboarding at pace and have added almost 80 broker firms already this year.
Reaffirming our commitment to the broker sector, in 2021 we extended the availability of our buy-to-let mortgages to our broker networks, giving them access to our BTL mortgages for the first time.
We have also added a revamped Intermediary website, and with feedback from brokers we have worked to provide a modern, intuitive and responsive replacement, which includes an improved search function, new resources page and improved broker support page.
Throughout the year, the HSBC UK Buying A Home team has received numerous industry awards, over 30 in total. We always do our best to provide great customer service alongside competitive products, so I am particularly proud to be awarded 5 stars for customer service in the Financial Adviser Service Awards.
I think this is a great achievement as four years ago we were awarded only one star. It is wonderful for the relentless efforts of my team to be independently recognised in this way.
On a personal level, I am extremely proud to have been appointed deputy chair of the UK Finance Mortgages Product and Service Board, in addition to being the lead on Diversity and Inclusion, which is a subject that is extremely close to my heart, and I look forward to taking that forward in 2022.
A snapshot of HSBC UK’s mortgages in 2021 in numbers:
- Provided a mortgage on over 28,000 homes for first time buyers.
- Overall, we helped provide the funding for the purchase of 90K homes in 2021.
- Average price paid by first time buyers for a property was £275k with an average mortgage of £212k vs £240K and £194K in 2020.
- Average LTV of first time buyers was 77% LTV in 2021 vs 81% LTV in 2020. Across all mortgages in 2021, the average LTV feel from 70% to 67%.
- More than doubled our broker partner numbers from 277 to 640 – an increase of 363 firms with access to our mortgages. We are currently on 717.
- The bank provided £27.6bn of gross new mortgage lending in 2021 vs £24.5bn in 2020.
