Great service comes with great relationships

Lenders must constantly evaluate their service standards and be constantly striving to innovate and improve, making systems and policies simple to use and to understand.

Brokers must also package their cases comprehensively and ‘tell the story’. Every customer is different, there’s no such thing as ‘vanilla’ we know that, so getting their circumstances across clearly in conjunction with the supporting documents is so vitally important to all lenders. Taking that little extra time at the start of the application to get it ‘right first time’ will allow lenders to process cases faster and lets brokers focus more of their time on what they do best, advising customers and building great businesses.

Our job is to ensure that we listen carefully to the feedback we’re given by our partners and act upon it. We know that being fast, clear and easy to do business with is a good starting point that resonates with brokers and customers, but being there to talk to when it’s not so straightforward is where we really differentiate what we do. Put simply, we’ll keep pushing those boundaries in 2022 and beyond.

To support our brokers, a series of CPD (Continuing Professional Development) approved Masterclass webinars were held on complex lending areas to help educate and highlight the key information needed to simplify the broker journey even more, whilst counting towards their professional development. These webinars were followed up with helpful bulletins as a future reference point and due to the popularity of these, they were extended across all our regions, helping as many brokers as possible.

In addition to our Masterclasses, we have also been running a number of webinars on cybercrime and fraud, also CPD approved, to raise awareness of how our intermediary partners can better protect themselves, whilst also allowing them to develop and enhance their abilities.

The role of a BDM

The BDM role continues to be a vital component for any successful lender operating in the broker space and we have a deep pool of talent up and down the UK helping brokers with their cases every day.

As a lender our job is to invest in and develop our people so that they add even more value to our broker partners. Whilst also creating an environment where our people can grow and excel, it makes a huge difference to work in an environment you love and also helped shape and that should always come across when you speak to your BDM. 

The evolution of lender service

We believe that lenders should be accessible and ready to talk to when brokers need them and being fast and simple to get hold of should never be an ‘optional extra’.

Recognising that brokers are our customer and that they also have customers to support and impress means that our DNA begins with “how can we help?” If you want to talk to us, we’re eager to hear from you over the phone or face to face, alternatively if you just need a quick catch up on something, Live Chat is also available.

We want to help brokers get answers to straightforward questions without any unnecessary delays. We know brokers are a progressive community who are happy to embrace multiple methods of communication if it means quicker responses and comprehensive answers.

Smarter tech spreads the workload and therefore it frees-up the phone lines, so when you really need to speak to someone, it's easier to get through and we can dedicate more time to helping you. It also means you don’t need to be tied to the hours our phone lines are operational and a lot of your case admin can be done out of office hours, at a time that is convenient to you that fits with your work/life balance.

Leveraged technology is always central to our plans and we’ll be announcing further enhancements to our service throughout 2022. Adopting more AVMs and Desktop valuations, as an example, certainly speeds things up as well as reducing paper based packaging requirements. Ensuring credit polices remain up to date and fit for purpose for the constantly evolving economic climate in the UK is also paramount. We’re constantly seeking feedback from our broker partners as to what more we can do to keep our policies pin sharp.

Also if you want to speak directly to an underwriter about a case, why not? Offering direct access to the Underwriter who is underwriting your application allows for more efficient communication and ensures that we can capture the full information of the case directly from the broker.

Looking ahead

Here at HSBC UK, we’ll continue to develop and enhance our broker proposition, whilst also maintaining a service that is totally dedicated to delivering the best possible outcome for you and your customers. We know that brokers place a whole lot of trust in the lender they choose and we don’t take that for granted, our dedicated team of people and our continued investment in service enablers should be a clear signal of our intent.

Chris Pearson
Head of Intermediary Mortgages, HSBC UK