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CV: Mr Law is responsible for Mortgage Express' product and marketing strategy for buy-to-let. He has more than 10 years experience in financial services and joined the lender in 2007 from Barclays, where he held positions within its product and distribution businesses, most recently that of head of business development for digital banking.

Mortgage Adviser: How did you move into your current role at Mortgage Express?

Jeremy Law: I have lived in the UK for about 11 years and I worked for Barclays for about 10 of that. I was becoming part of the furniture at Barclays so I decided it was time for a move. I wanted to move into a smaller organisation and Bradford & Bingley and Mortgage Express ticked all the boxes as the sort of job I wanted to do and the type of organisation I wanted to join.

MA: Was your role at Barclays in a similar capacity?

JL: Not really. As someone who spent such a long time at one organisation I did a little bit of everything. I suppose the first half of my career was more on the sales management side and the second half was more on the commercial and product management side, which would be more relevant experience to my current role. That was mainly in the UK but I also did a couple of stints in Africa.

MA: What were you tasked with doing when you joined B&B and Mortgage Express?

JL: My role is really one that is commercial, which involves looking after the products and the customer category. The role is all around balancing volume, risk and margin. So as you can imagine considering I joined seven months ago at the beginning of the credit crunch that role still requires juggling those three balls but which ball is the most important at any one time can change dramatically.

MA: Would you say that in the current environment the areas you need to concentrate on are rapidly changing?

JL: Absolutely yes. Margins have been heavily affected by the cost of funds, which has been heavily affected by the wider economic issues. Volume demands have been made more difficult by an environment that has seen the withdrawal of a number of lenders.

MA: So has the changing environment meant there are certain areas you were originally tasked with that you still need to look at or that have been thrown out of the window?

JL: What is still really important to understand is buy-to-let, landlords and tenants housing is still as strong as it ever was and all the fundamentals are still the same. So one of the things I took on board as a challenge is we ever increasingly need to think about this market in a slightly different way. We cannot just be thinking about a buy-to-let lender being just one thing. There are very many different types of buy-to-let borrowers. The market is just about 10-years-old so we are looking at these different investor segments and how we can service their needs. That will become more and more important as we come out of the other side of the credit crunch.

MA: Would you say the current environment is the biggest challenge you have had to face or have there been tougher challenges to overcome?

JL: I would say leaving Barclays was the biggest challenge I have ever faced in that it was the first place I had ever worked and I had been there for 10 years. It was a fairly large cultural upheaval. The second thing is in my time I have taught a lot of sailing. I used to teach children sailing and on one or two occasions I actually had to teach adults to sail. That was pretty challenging. Children are far easier to teach than adults.

MA: How do you think the present downturn is affecting buy-to-let? Will it affect it further?

JL: Obviously the overall mortgage market has been affected by the credit crunch so there are less lenders left in the market and those lenders that are left have less money to lend. So there are simple supply and demand economics. People in the current climate are nervous about getting into owner occupation. However the experienced buy-to-let investor is confident in the current environment, is seeing rental yields rising steadily and also seeing some really good buying opportunities. So there are two slightly different things, the wider mortgage market, including buy-to-let is impacted by the level of funds available but the buy-to-let investor is far more confident and far more ready and willing to capture whatever opportunities they can.

MA: In the current environment are people seeing buy-to-let as less of an attractive investment proposition?

JL: Absolutely. As the residential market is being affected in terms of confidence and people not really wanting to enter owner-occupation if they are not already in it, the amateur buy-to-let investor is affected by the same confidence so they do not understand their market well enough yet to understand the opportunities that experienced landlords would see. I do think they have been affected by the level of press coverage. The experienced landlords are far clearer on the opportunities in terms of understanding rental yields are rising and understanding there are buying opportunities out there. In many ways now is the ideal time in the cycle to be getting good deals in buy-to-let investments but of course the amateurs have been scared away to a certain degree.

MA: Have you seen any signs that amateur speculative investors that have entered the market in the last few years are selling up and getting out?

JL: We have not seen on our book or in the surveys we do with our customer base any evidence of anybody withdrawing from the market as a result of current conditions.

MA: So the prospects for professional landlords with large portfolios are good at the moment?

JL: Yes. If there are less people entering owner occupation they still have to live somewhere. That is why rents are rising because the demand for rental properties is as high if not greater than ever before. So professional landlords are seeing rents rise and they are seeing really good value properties they are able to buy. They are getting the best sides of both.

MA: Is there anything innovative in the market you would like to see more of?

JL: At this point in the cycle innovation is being contained at the moment because of issues around being able to manage volumes. We are not seeing anything jump out at the moment. All lenders are building plans for the future but at the moment nothing particularly innovative is coming out. The most interesting thing to happen in recent times in the residential market is the HSBC rate matcher deal. It brings a level of personal pricing into the mortgage industry that has not been there before.

MA: What would you say has been your biggest success?

JL: Professionally I would say one of the jobs I did for Barclays. Barclays bought a bank in South Africa and I went down there for six months throughout the acquisition and in a 10-week period I built and launched a staff proposition looking at all the financial services products that could be given to staff. I did that in an eight to 10 week period so to see that sort of impact across 40,000 people was very powerful. In my private life I would say getting engaged to my fiancee Sarah.

MA: How different was it working in South Africa than in the UK?

JL: I guess there are two very obvious differences. One is there is huge cultural difference in how you do business and how you work with people. The other one that is slightly surprising is quite a lot of the South African financial services industry is more sophisticated and automated than we are in the UK. A lot more self-service machines and capability and things like that.

MA: How did you cope with the cultural differences?

JL: Just spending quite a bit of time getting to know people in the organisation and the good old philosophy of having one mouth but two ears. So listen more than you speak and try to understand all about cultures and learn a lot about their history and background.

MA: What are your predictions for the mortgage industry and the buy-to-let sector for the year ahead?

JL: In many ways the industry has changed a lot in the last six months and it will take a long time for it ever to return to how it was. So we are in a new world. A lot of lenders have left the market and may not necessarily return. If some do it will be in the same way. Of all the existing lenders who are still there as we come through the credit crunch and liquidity returns we will be as strong, if not stronger, than ever before. It is very hard to tell on timing. We are obviously seeing positive moves from the Bank of England.

MA: Is there anything you think could be improved in the industry?

JL: One of the things we are going to have to think about in the buy-to-let industry as it matures is we are seeing that it is 10-years-old, a lot of customers have built up significant portfolios and one of the the things we are going to have to think about is how do those customers realise those assets at a particular moment in time? How do they retire from being landlords and what do they do with all the assets they have amassed? These are things we are all going to have to think about in the not too distant future.