Gurpreet Chahal, corporate account manager at Accord Mortgages, talks to The Intermediary about the challenges and opportunities for the mortgage market, and what lenders and brokers should be doing to help their clients.
To begin, tell us a bit about your background in the industry and what attracted you to Accord?
I’ve worked for Yorkshire Building Society and Accord for the past 13 years, doing a variety of different jobs across the organisation, including a role as a mortgage adviser in branch after completing my Certificate in Mortgage Advice and Practice (CeMap), which enabled me to get firsthand experience of helping customers to buy their dream home.
Following that, I took on a position as a business development manager for our agencies in the Midlands. This enabled me to support business owners to further grow and develop their companies.
I then moved into an area manager role – again in the Midlands – where I led a group of 70 colleagues across 10 different branch locations all the way from Birmingham to Reading, before taking what felt like the natural next step of becoming a corporate account manager two-and-a-half years ago.
This sees me supporting and growing our relationships with our key lending partners and finding opportunities to collaborate. I also use the insight these relationships give me to help Accord bring new and innovative propositions to the market in response to intermediaries’ evolving needs.
I love working for Accord because supporting our intermediary partners and their clients is our driving force, and my role allows me to meet with – and work in collaboration with – some amazing colleagues across the whole mortgage industry.
How would you define the mortgage industry and what are some of the biggest challenges in the market right now?
The mortgage industry is constantly changing. Thanks to factors like the economic climate, regulation, consumer behaviour and technology, things keep moving forwards.
As an organisation – and an individual working in the industry – you can’t stand still. You have to constantly adapt to meet the needs of your customers – in our case, our brokers.
As we’ve seen in recent times, our industry is also impacted significantly by other external factors, including global events like the US presidential election or the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
In terms of challenges for brokers and their clients, we know that many aspiring homeowners are struggling to either save for a deposit or pass affordability assessments to buy their first or next home.
While increased market stability and reduced interest rates is helping with the affordability challenge, the issue of building a big enough deposit remains, and is the reason why our £5k Deposit Mortgage has already helped many first-time buyers into their homes – when they didn’t believe it was possible. Launched in March this year, this enables first-time buyers to purchase a house worth up to £500,000 with a deposit of £5,000.
For brokers, the biggest challenge is supporting their clients through this ever-changing environment, which means developing both themselves and their businesses to meet their clients’ increasing needs.
Another challenge is finding the most appropriate way to work with each client – which is vital – as we know the communication and process preferences of Gen Z are very different to those of Millennials, for example.
What are some of the biggest opportunities in the market at the moment?
The constant change in the industry is very exciting as it provides opportunities to look at how you can evolve, and this is something Accord, as a lender, does very well, in partnership with intermediaries.
In terms of opportunities for brokers, education is one area where an intermediary can really foster strong relationships with clients to help inform and guide them on things such as deposit requirements and product options to make their home ownership goals more achievable.
The post-Covid world we now live in is another huge opportunity, as clients’ personal circumstances have become much more complex over quite a short period of time. For example, it’s now very rare to find an application where both applicants are working full-time in a permanently employed job. We see a variety of combinations, which include self-employed applicants with complex income structures, contractors, company directors and many more.
Add to this some of the unfortunate outcomes from the cost-of-living crisis which resulted in missed payments or credit blips, and the advice and guidance of an intermediary becomes even more critical.
Mortgage brokers are needed now more than ever to help their clients, so we should also look to grasp the solution technology offers to some of the heavy lifting, allowing them to use their valuable time to provide that much-needed personalised advice.
It can also help them achieve that all-important work-life balance – using the right online tools to save even 15 minutes per case can support that shift to a healthier balance.
Accord’s £5k Deposit Mortgage product caused quite a stir earlier this year, what has the response been like since then?
The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from day one from both brokers and their clients. We’ve heard some hugely heartwarming stories of how it’s changed borrowers’ lives for the better by helping them onto the housing ladder after they’d given up hope.
While we were clear from the outset that it wouldn’t suit everyone, we continue to see a steady flow of applications.
We also recently launched our Home Improvements policy paper at a Parliamentary reception, where we drew attention to proposals we have to promote action for first-time buyers, including the introduction of a new, more fit-for-purpose replacement for the former Help to Buy scheme and a review of stress-testing regulation to loosen the ties preventing lenders from innovating, to help this vital group onto the property ladder.
What should lenders be doing to help brokers help their clients at the moment?
Each lender will have its own focus, but at Accord, we want to help and support brokers to provide the best possible solution for every one of their clients.
We aim to achieve this by innovating, introducing new products like our £5k Deposit Mortgage; through other unique solutions like our Cascade Score range which gives people alternative options if they don’t quite make our highest credit scorecard requirements, and by using our common-sense underwriting approach to bring that all-important human touch to each case.
Above all, we want to work in partnership with brokers, take the time to truly understand their needs and help them navigate today’s complex mortgage market landscape on behalf of their clients.
Accord Mortgages has a significant focus on supporting brokers, what kind of support does the Growth Series offer, and why did Accord launch it?
We wanted to provide tangible help and support for brokers to grow their own businesses – which will ultimately help more consumers, as well as benefitting the mortgage industry.
The Growth Series has been a great way for us to demonstrate this by providing a wide range of materials including blogs, guides, and podcasts focusing on topics from how embracing new artificial intelligence (AI) could help their businesses, to the ins and outs of different kinds of regulation.
We’ve also held several online Growth Series events attended by hundreds of brokers across the UK, covering key topics such as the economy or using social media to grow their businesses.
We now have more than 10,000 intermediaries across the UK who subscribe to and regularly download, listen to, and watch, content on the Growth Series, demonstrating how much they value the content it offers.
Technology and AI have been key topics in the mortgage industry recently. How do you see these tools reshaping the way brokers interact with clients and manage their workloads?
My view is that if brokers can implement AI and better technology generally into their businesses, there is a great opportunity to create efficiencies.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to this, so it’s up to each business to review how they operate and establish where technology can add value. For example, we know that technology can automate meeting notes and produce suitability reports, among other time-saving examples.
From a business development perspective, having an effective customer relationship management (CRM) tool in place can help a business tailor its marketing content to different segments of its client base, helping to boost retention as well as providing opportunities for additional product sales.
This kind of advancement to deal with some of the heavy lifting involved, can enable mortgage brokers to really use their expertise – focusing on what technology can’t do – which is to provide a personalised human touch through advice.
What’s next for Accord – are there any new developments on the horizon?
At Accord, we’re always keen to be innovative and help brokers to support more clients in underserved segments of the market – which is why we launched the £5k Deposit Mortgage, alongside other affordability enhancements we’ve made this year.
As for the future, we will continue to listen to our brokers, take their feedback on board and act on it. We want to bring further new product solutions to the market, as well as ensuring that we provide additional support for them in growing their businesses. This will ensure we retain our place as a go-to lender with a reputation for flexible, common-sense solutions, efficient service and, above all, that personal, human touch.
