FTAdviser.com

Advertising

With a real hands-on attitude and prudent focus on business, Nigel Quinton, chief executive of Mansfield Building Society, believes a bit of guts and hard graft has highlighted its success.

In the last three years, the society has grown, with its assets increasing from £198m to £286m.

As it now stands strong with £300m in assets, compared to £30m more thn 25 years ago, having been taken under the wing eight months ago by the golf lover who aims to putt for profit - on and off the golfing range.

Mr Quinton said: "Our whole focus has been about being prudent and cautious.

"Although many feel that the emphasis is about working in an organisation that is dynamic, being boring can have its advantages."

In inheriting a strong business, Mr Quinton vows to excel its progress.

He said: "Our success depends on strategic needs rather than profit needs. We want to maintain our assets, as we want to keep expenses relatively low.

"There is a commercial model which is capital strong, where you can grow at a less profitable rate. We can afford to do business at a lower level because we have this capital strength."

He said: "It is my job to make sure that we diversify into different parts of the financial market giving income streams which allows us to subsidise our activity we have already got.

"I believe the mortgage brokerage, the IFA type activity, can be built around for a good, franchised building society and contribute significantly."

With two advisers already in place in the mortgage brokerage, Mr Quinton had planned for eight advisers last year, but held fire due to the low volumes in the last year. Next year, he plans to get a full team of eight.

Also, the society is in the process of leading a joint venture with an IFA firm, and aims to launch this before the end of the year.

He said: "We hope that it will give us an income stream and a service to our members, which will help contribute to the overall pot and a steady growth of capital and to continue to offer attractive products.

"Our loan-to-value in new business is 75 per cent with the current pricing, and up to 80 per cent and 90 per cent. So we still have quite a lot of security in our business. We have more liquidity now than we ever had in our existence. We have plenty of fuel to do a fair amount of mortgage business."

With the credit crunch in full swing and a pending recession in the offing, Mr Quinton relies heavily on his background and knowledge to tackle these challenges head on.

The Chesterfield-born and bred music-fan, who had briefly delved in a local authority career and trained as an accountant at the same time, decided the mutuality of a building society seemed to be a good step forward and started at the Derbyshire Building Society as an accountant in 1988, before becoming chief accountant.

In 2003, he moved on to the Yorkshire Building Society, to endure a 150-mile round trip every day for two years.

Getting tired of that, he then became finance director for Mansfield Building Society and stepped up to its chief executive role after, David Fisher, then chief executive, retired on 14 August 2008, after being in the position for 27 years.

Mr Quinton was officially appointed on 5 December 2007, but took over eight months ago when Mr Fisher stepped down.

Admitting that the handover had been a challenge, he said: "I started off life as a finance thoroughbred to wanting to become a chief executive. It worked out to be a hard eight months with change over and the credit crunch. But now I am in a position where I can think clearly about what I want to do for the way forward."

For Mr Quinton, it seems that his plan of attack has already been put into action with a "prudent" approach to business.

He said: "Our funding structure is predominantly retail balances. Only 16 per cent of our funding is from wholesale markets, which is a relatively small amount.

"Looking at the balances, and until the end of August, we have £231m of mortgage assets and £231m of retail balances as well.

"From a risk point of view, with the downturn of market and house prices, we have followed a really prudent path over the last 20 to 30 years.

"Our average loan to value is somewhere about 40 per cent, so we have been very prudent. We have not got sub-prime or self-certification on our books, so all the high risk asset classes, we do not have. We have good liquidity and good funding. So the last eight months have been managing the cashflow.

"And from a general point of view, our profits are in line with last year. Debt-wise, our arrears are the same, if not better than last year. We have a national reach with mortgage products and postal account for retail savings. It is more prudent to focus locally as this makes a difference."

The dad-of-two, who loves family life, also adopts this ethic at work, where he feels like heading the Society is like being part of a family.

He said: "There is a market for both small and bigger building societies, and large can be good in some circumstances.

"We are focusing on our local community and we have a strong bias towards our local community. We give mortgages that are for our locality and we try to plough our benefits into the community. As a small society, we can do that.

"We are looking to new areas in our heartland that we can service with our branch network. We appreciate that small towns still need financial services.

"Our culture is very different, but whether it is a defining feature that makes a difference on whether it is a success or failure, I do not know.

"Building societies seem to have a similar culture, where it is about working together and getting stuck in."

This is true, as even as chief executive when a staff car park was built recently and the building next door needed to be emptied Mr Quinton rolled up his own sleeves to carry stuff back along with other staff members.

But with testing times ahead, Mr Quinton emphasised it was necessary to nip a lack of confidence in the bud and promote this similar family-based culture into business.

He said: "The crucial thing is confidence. Confidence in the retail inflow and our customers is absolutely important and if any organisation loses that, they lose the battle.

"We have all got a responsibility to keep the confidence going to be positive about the situation and lets try and limit the damage.

"We are trying to make sure that when the market turns, we are ready for business. Smirking away is the wrong approach. The cycle is on a downturn at the moment. It will come back, but it is just a matter of when to capitalise our position."

He concluded: "By sticking to our core principles and ensuring we continue to deliver consistently excellent personal service, I am sure we will get there."

Nigel Quinton CV

1988: Accountant, Derbyshire Building Society

2003: Finance director, Yorkshire Building Society

2005: Director of finance and IT, Mansfield Building Society

2007: Chief executive, Mansfield Building Society