A new, exciting chapter...
I wanted to start my first blog by first reflecting on what has been an exciting start to 2025.
As you will no doubt have seen, at the start of the year the Bank became part of the Coventry Building Society family marking a significant milestone, bringing together two value-driven organisations that will result in a mutually owned business that’s deeply passionate about its members, customers and communities.
While our new organisation is brought together, we hope that you will have seen that our unwavering focus on making sure we deliver the best possible service to you and your clients hasn't changed.
Our new family presents new opportunities to adapt, innovate and change and as this happens I know the organisation has made a commitment to ensuring you are kept updated as we go through this journey.
As for the here and now, it remains very much business as usual and as we find ourselves over a quarter of the way into 2025, we continue to reflect on the evolving landscape of mortgages and the impact it has on both brokers and consumers alike.
The year so far has been a constant reminder that we continue to navigate through economic uncertainty and that we need to be flexible in continuing to react to market shifts, technological advancements and consumer demand.
Offering a consistent service is something I am committed to doing and I am pleased that we have started to make differences in the following areas to make the journey better for you and your clients:
- Increasing the use of Automated Valuation Models (AVMs).
- Proactive communication with you and your teams when necessary to help speed up processing timelines.
- Reducing our average time to offer.
- Simplifying the number of questions and documents required, while adopting a common-sense approach to our underwriting process.
- Improving our lending criteria to meet even more customer needs.
Our teams are always here to help and we pride ourselves on creating a supportive environment to make sure you and your clients receive the help needed in those moments of truth.
Before I end, I wanted to highlight some of the great work that has been done in simplifying our product switch process.
Providing an efficient product switch process is a big focus for us and whilst I know there is more work for us to do, it was great to be told that we’d removed the need for customers to sign offers before completion in many cases and we've set clear service level agreements for application submissions and in-flight product changes.
Over the course of the next few months I look forward to updating you on some of the exciting activity we're aiming to achieve this year.
Fred Sharp
Director of Mortgage Distribution