How important is service to Scottish Widows Bank?
You can’t put a price on it. The fact is that our improved service means we are doing three times the level of business we were doing last year, and we are now on track to be one of the UK’s top 10 lenders. We now have a team that’s totally focused on service; this is reflected in both our adviser and customer NPS scores which have been steadily improving for the last 18 months.
Can you explain the changes you have made to your business development team?
We’ve enhanced our business development team structure following extensive feedback from advisers. As a result there is always telephone support when our field-based business development managers (BDMs) are unavailable.
We have always had a dedicated team of field-based BDMs.
However if an adviser was in an area covered by our telephone-based BDM team they would not have access to a field-based BDM. Last October we changed that, so now everyone has access to face-to-face and telephony contact.
Advisers are also supported by a telephone-based intermediary support team that can help with everything from policy and criteria through to submitting applications. Finally the overall business development team has grown, we have increased the number of roles by 20%.
You’ve streamlined your underwriting service, can you tell us more?
Yes. In the last 12 months we have ring-fenced and improved the quality of our underwriting team.
We now have a team that is dedicated to Scottish Widows Bank.
They understand that our clients’ circumstances differ from the mainstream. This is because they tend to be more affluent, more likely to be professionals and often self-employed with multiple sources of income.
We believe our end-customer experience is key to the service we offer advisers. For example, we had the British Medical Association come in and train our underwriters.
Why did we do this?
Well doctors may have up to 31 different types of income.
Many are also part self-employed so this means they will earn different types of income, some sustainable and some variable.
A lot of lenders look at a doctor’s basic pay and discount everything else which can be very frustrating for the adviser and their client.
At Scottish Widows Bank we have deep experience of lending to customers with more complex incomes and we have built that into our underwriting approach. So we now have a specialist team that can understand the complexities of those on higher incomes and the different types of self-employment – a partner in a law firm vs an IT contractor for example.
What changes have you noticed?
We have far fewer touches of each case by the underwriting team, 40% less in fact, and advisers are telling us how happy they are with our service. Speed has improved, for example, one of our largest introducers recently put us top of their league table for average application to offer times recently.
How does service reflect in your product offering?
Service is very important but the product offering has to fit the needs of our advisers’ clients. For this reason offset is available on every product regardless of term, LTV or repayment type. No other offset lender does that.
We have also enhanced the range of repayment vehicles available for interest only mortgages.
In response to adviser feedback we have end-to-end case ownership for all applications and a dedicated team for large loans over £500,000. A lot of advisers were telling us that with new builds clients may be buying off plan and need to secure the offer for longer than three months.
As a result all offers are now valid for six months.
In addition to all this we also offer very competitive rates, as we have the strength of Lloyds Banking Group behind us! You have also upped your e-business support, can you explain some more?
Our online mortgage service gives instant decisions in principle and you can also submit full applications or product transfers online.
We are in the process of making a number of improvements to our systems that will be rolled out later this year to respond to feedback from advisers such as online registration so new advisers can be up and running more quickly.
Our online offset calculator is excellent and has been recently enhanced to work on tablets and mobiles.
Our calculator enables you to see the impact of both regular or lump sum savings on the term or monthly payment of your offset mortgage. The Scottish Widows Bank offset learning hub, launched last year, is a great resource that provides a range of tools and case studies to explain the offset concept.
One of the things you will find on the hub is our offset guide for clients. It’s been downloaded by advisers 18,000 times in the past six months and the print version is going into its third run. You could say it’s been a bestseller!
Find out more at www.scottishwidows.co.uk/advisersupport
Sources: Scottish Widows
Martin Fleming, managing director of Scottish Widows Bank
In December 2015 Martin took up the Managing Director role for Scottish Widows Bank which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lloyds Banking Group. Martin has extensive experience across the full range of channels, products and functions in banking. Prior to his current role Martin was the Operations Director in Lloyds Banking Group’s Asset Finance division, leading a team of over 1,300 people supporting the Blackhorse and LexAutolease businesses. Martin is a member of the Scottish Executive Committee of Lloyds Banking Group, and a trustee of the Bank of Scotland Foundation.
