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CV: Kevin Purvey was appointed head of corporate intermediary sales for Cheltenham & Gloucester in January 2007. Prior to that he was head of sales at Bank of Ireland Mortgages. Mr Purvey joined Bank of Ireland in 1990 as a business development manager and also filled the role of national account manager. He has also worked as a life inspector for Legal & General, a broker for Keith Scott & Co and as a bank clerk for Natwest Bank.

Mortgage Adviser: You joined Cheltenham & Gloucester at the beginning of the year. What do you believe you have achieved in the first half of 2008?

Kevin Purvey: Initially it was very important for me to understand how the business operated, especially in the environment the company found itself in. From there on I have developed a more structured approach to our corporate accounts so that we can extract the best value possible. I have also been active in the contributing to our service proposition for intermediaries.

MA: How do you believe your experience from your previous roles has helped you at C&G?

KP: Most of my roles have given me a huge insight into how the intermediary market operates but specifically the exposure to the buy-to-let market. I feel I have had a lot of experience that has put me in good stead. I have worked extensively on the intermediary side. Prior to my previous role I was working as a life inspector for Legal & General and I have actually been a broker myself as well so I have done all aspects of the job so I can understand it from an adviser perspective as well.

MA: Earlier this year a lot of mortgage advisers were unhappy about C&G's service levels. What happened?

KP: It is best to go back to the beginning. C&G embarked on a two stage process to re-engineer how it worked with intermediaries. The first part of that was to get the infrastructure in place to deal with the intermediary process and the second part of that is what we are now dealing with - the speed and efficiency and the quality of the decisioning we give to the intermediary at the outset. Back in the summer of last year the view was taken to move away from a branch-based process and on to a central system called Caseflow. This is our online intermediary point of entry, which was developed at a cost of £20m. We also developed a central telephony point for us so intermediaries could utilise that if they were having problems with Caseflow and wanted to ask us questions. That was all put into place during September and October last year. Then the business development sales force was restructured to work with our new model, which focused around relationship management and had many of those business development managers on the road. There were a variety of changes that took place and C&G was not naive enough to think all that change was going to happen with no teething problems. However we did believe it was the right time to implement that. We all know what then happened - the credit crunch hit the markets. So it was a combination of factors, which led to us finding ourselves with unprecedented levels of business due to the lack of supply in the market.

MA: What actions have you taken to stop this from happening again?

KP: What we have done is create regional teams have become very much outward facing and will look to support the adviser. So within that team if the adviser does have a problem the idea is they will build up a relationship within that team where they can discuss cases through one central point. The ultimate aim is to provide that support so if problems are encountered within a case, we are going to put that case back on track very quickly, without any hand offs. It becomes very much a one touch solution and again I think that is the way we can build long-term sustainable relationships. We have piloted it in the last couple of months with 1000 advisers in the south west. Feedback has been extremely good. Obviously being a pilot, we have made tweaks along the way, but we have now rolling it out and we would hope to have the whole of the intermediary community rolled out by the end of October.

MA: Do you want to be among the best service providers in the UK?

KP: It would be one of our goals certainly. I think the UK financial services market is based around strong product offerings but the service has to go with it and we very much want to be the best. I think we are demonstrating it and while we have had some problems we have acknowledged what those are and taken some action. We have invested both a huge amount of time and money and resource into improving the proposition with a view to moving it on as well.

MA: What are your predictions for the mortgage market for the rest of this year?

KP: It is a difficult one to call. The market is still in a state of flux. What we have seen is when we do get those reductions lenders have been quick to pass on that straight into the intermediary community for customers. For the UK mortgage market it is still going to be a challenging time and there will be a number of advisers that will be forced to leave the industry just because of the tough trading conditions. The people that remain will be reassessing their position and whether they are authorised to the FSA or whether they are linked to a network. Evidence shows there will be some movement from the directly authorised markets into the larger networks as advisers want some comfort and some support from some of the larger players.

MA: Are you doing anything in terms of product innovation?

KP: Product innovation is always something we are looking for plus value for the intermediary and for the end consumer. The All Weather mortgage is a good example of that in a market that has been very volatile with people not knowing whether to fix or track. Longer term it will be about responding to specific market demand. There has been quite a bit of press and demand in the adviser space for longer term fixed rates so we have introduced a seven-year fixed rate and there is continuing work going on to see if there is a market for longer term fixed rates as well.

MA: What will be your main challenges in the next 12 months?

KP: If we put the economy and the housing market to one side the biggest challenge here will be implementing and bedding in the service improvements and continuing to reassess the adviser communications are on the right track and collect adviser feedback as we go on.

MA: Is there one thing you would like to achieve this year?

KP: I would like for the intermediary to see C&G as their preferred choice.

MA: What is the main thing you have learnt since working in this industry?

KP: Keep things simple and always expect the unexpected.