I launched LiveMore in July 2020 to help bring mortgage lending to a hugely underserved part of the population – an age group we now refer to as 50 to 90+.
It was four months into the pandemic, and some may say not the best time to launch a business. It was a bold move, but I have no regrets and this month we celebrate being two years old.
It has been an amazing two years and I’d like to share a few stats with you. We now have 50 staff members, and an almost equal split of men and women with 48% of our workforce being female.
We’ve been building up our distribution, and we now have 3,200 registered brokers. In order to get our message out there we’ve hosted 38 webinars and delivered 313 training sessions.
Our business development team has been getting out and about and they have attended over 30 broker roadshows.
We offer a range of fixed rate interest-only mortgages with the most popular product being our five-year fixed rate, and our average loan size being £175,000.
Our oldest customer is 92 – yes, you read that correctly, 92 years old, which is why we say the age range we will lend to is 50 to 90+. To us, age does not have to be a barrier when getting a mortgage.
I am proud that we have been able to grow the business quickly and deliver fantastic customer outcomes – more of that later.
USPs
We are unique in the market as we are the only lender specialising in mortgage lending to this age group – at the moment anyway.
Another of our USPs is the Ongoing Procuration Fee, which ensures that an annual call is made to our customers. We are hugely proud of launching this initiative as we believe that identifying potential vulnerabilities of customers is so important, especially as they get older.
In return for completing this call, brokers can earn commission of 0.13% every year for up to 15 years or the life of the mortgage, whichever is shorter.
Busy start to 2022
As a new lender we started off with one product – a retirement interest-only mortgage (RIO) for people aged 55 and over with no upper age limit.
Momentum has really built during 2022, launching our second product in February – a term interest-only mortgage (TIO) for people aged 50 to 80.
In March we expanded into Scotland and in April we restructured our products from a two-tier structure into four tiers covering all the different criteria we will lend on.
In May we shortened the early repayment charges on our 10 and 20-year fixed rates and fixed for life range.
June saw the introduction of our Enhanced Procuration Fee paying 1.1% on 20-year fixed rate and fixed for life products, as long as an annual customer care call is made by the broker to their client.
Our quickest application to valuation turnaround was one day, the average application to offer time is 21.5 days and the average review period for applications is 2 days.
Staff and customer ratings
People really enjoy working for us and delivering great customer outcomes. Our internal staff survey gave an employee satisfaction rate of 8.8 out of 10, which is great feedback. We recognise that we can always improve as an employer, but this is a great start.
And, for a bit of trivia, in our two-year existence, the London head office has ordered 122 pizzas and we’ve drunk around 2,000 cups of tea. We also now have an office in Bristol and are hoping to open an office in Glasgow soon, so we’ll have pizzas going there too.
Customers also love us, we have a Trustpilot Rating of 4.8 which is ‘excellent’. We conducted a Customer Survey in Autumn 2021, which showed that 100% of our borrowers would recommend us to a friend.
We have also won three awards this year, which isn’t bad for a company that’s two years old.
The next stage
As we move into our third year, it is going to be nothing short of exciting and eventful.
We have new products on the horizon, our brand is getting better known, and our message that age is not a barrier is resonating with brokers and customers. People should not be discriminated against because of their age and if they can afford to repay a mortgage, then why shouldn’t they?
Here’s to the next two years and beyond!
