" In recent years the business has evolved, with Hinckley & Rugby becoming a national specialist lender, rather than a regional society offering more vanilla products to its local community. "
FR: Tell us a little about yourself and what your role is at Hinckley & Rugby for Intermediaries.
I have been in the mortgage industry for 20 years, primarily working in the specialist lending sector, although I’ve also had experience on the broking side of the business. After working for specialists like Together, The Mortgage Lender and Masthaven, I joined Hinckley & Rugby just over a year ago as its head of mortgage sales and distribution.
In this role I am responsible for its external sales team and oversee the intermediary business, responsible for around 90% of the Society’s mortgage lending. My role is about establishing and building professional relationships, inside and outside the Society. And this is what I really love about the job — working with intermediaries, developing effective partnerships, so we can better understand their needs and their customers’ needs, and then ensure our products, our services and systems reflect this.
FR: Hinckley & Rugby recently underwent a rebrand. Can you tell us what this means for brokers and their customers?
This rebrand reflects where we are now as a business and where our future ambitions lie. In recent years the business has evolved, with Hinckley & Rugby becoming a national specialist lender, rather than a regional society offering more vanilla products to its local community. Today we are a top 20 building society with ambitious plans to grow the business further, hopefully growing our book of business from £850m to £1bn.
FR: One of your most popular products is the Income Flex, which you increased to 95% LTV earlier in the year - what types of customer is this product aimed at and how does the product work?
This product really reflects our ethos at Hinckley & Rugby, and demonstrates one of our key strengths as a lender. We now offer this product up to 95% LTV, so it’s certainly suitable for first-time buyers, but it is designed to meet the needs of a much wider range of borrowers. Essentially these are borrowers who have income from more than one source, and want this to be taken into account when calculating affordability. This could be people with more than one job, self-employed earnings, dividends and so on. And we look at these various income streams across the household. It might be a couple, but it could also be siblings or friends buying together, or a parent and child. Affordability remains challenging and this approach allows applicants to flex and stretch their income, enabling more people to get a mortgage. We also think this is a more modern approach, reflecting the realities of working life today.
FR: What role do you feel societies like the Hinckley & Rugby have in the UK mortgage market and in particular specialist lending?
Building societies like Hinckley & Rugby are an important bridge between specialist providers and more mainstream high street lenders. We have a range of specialist products and a team of dedicated underwriters who will assess individual cases on their own merits. But we also retain the values of our mutual heritage: putting customers first and ensuring we provide competitively-priced mortgage products to a wide group of borrowers. We haven’t lost those values, in fact products like Income Flex and Credit Flex are designed to reflect them.
FR: Fast forward 12 months, where would you like to see Hinckley & Rugby positioned in the UK lending sector?
As a lender we are gaining momentum, I can certainly see the difference to where we were 12 months ago when I joined the business. Intermediaries are now more familiar with our brand and recognise what our products can offer their clients. We’ve been around for 159 years, so certainly aren’t the new kids on the block, but we are starting to make more of a mark in the specialist market. We want this momentum to continue, to grow Hinckley & Rugby and ultimately help more borrowers buy a property, move house or remortgage.
FR: If there was one thing you'd like brokers to take away about Hinckley & Rugby, what would that be?
We want to help brokers with cases they have difficulty placing elsewhere. This isn’t just about our Flex product range, our underwriting panel meets every weekday to discuss borrowers that fall outside these criteria, often making same-day decision on these cases. Brokers can speak directly to those making these decisions. So please, pick up the phone and give us a call.
