Despite a subdued mortgage lending market, mortgage lenders and their suppliers do deserve praise for some of their activities. The Mortgage Finance Gazette Awards enables organisations within the mortgage industry to have their achievements recognised
The MFG Awards acknowledge the achievements of people and organisations. There are two parts to the awards – the Nominated Awards and the Best Mortgage Product Providers. Winners celebrated at an informal gathering in the heart of the City of London where they were presented with their awards.
The process for the Nominated Awards involves nominations from within the industry and a judging panel then chooses the winners. This year’s judges were Diana Wright of the Sunday Times, Bernard Clarke of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, Paul Broadhead from the Building Societies Association, Ben Wilkie who is Editor of What Mortgage and Joanne Atkin, Editor of Mortgage Finance Gazette. Some of the categories are divided into ‘large lenders’ (the top 20 in size) and ‘small to medium-sized lenders'.
The Best Mortgage Product Providers are deciphered independently based on a variety of analytical data compiled by financial research company Defaqto.
For Best Overall Lender, Building Society and Bank categories, Defaqto looked at the competitive positions of the provider offerings taking into account a mix of mortgages available for house purchase, first time buyers and remortgage. It used a variety of fixed, discounted and tracker mortgages, as well as loan-to-values, application fees and no tie-ins beyond the initial rate period.
For the Best Lifetime Mortgage Provider and Best Buy-to-Let Mortgage Provider, Defaqto took into account a mix of interest rates, loan-to-values, fees, plus features and options.
WINNERS AT A GLANCE
Nominated Awards
Community Services Award for Large Lenders
Winner: Coventry Building Society
Highly Commended: Leeds Building Society
Community Services Award for Small to Medium Sized Lenders
Winner: Principality Building Society
Highly Commended: Newbury Building Society
Innovator Award for Lenders
Winner: Lloyds TSB
Highly Commended: Yorkshire Building Society
Innovator Award for Non-Lenders
Winner: xit2
Highly Commended: Ethicall Field Services
Excellence in Treating Customers Fairly - Lenders
Winner: Yorkshire Building Society
Highly Commended: Coventry Building Society
Highly Commended: Darlington Building Society
Excellence in Treating Customers Fairly - Non-Lenders
Winner: Capital Fortune
Highly Commended: Optima Legal
Best Debt and Arrears Management Strategy
Winner: Principality Building Society
Highly Commended: Lloyds Banking Group
Ecological/Green Award
Winner: Leeds Building Society
Best Use of Technology
Winner: Countrywide Surveying Services
Highly Commended: Northern Rock
Best Use of Technology by Technology Providers
Winner: The Charlbury Group
Highly Commended: DPR Consulting
Highly Commended: DST Global Solutions
Best Anti-Fraud Measure
Winner: CoreLogic Solutions
Highly Commended: Quest
Individual Achievement Award
Phillippa Cardno, assistant general manager customer services, Newbury Building Society
Leadership Award
Stephen Noakes, commercial director, Lloyds Banking Group Mortgages
Best Mortgage Product Providers
Best Overall Lender
HSBC
2nd: Santander
3rd: Nationwide Building Society
Best National Building Society
Nationwide Building Society
2nd: Yorkshire Building Society
3rd: Leeds Building Society
Best National Bank
HSBC
2nd: Santander
3rd: Co-operative Bank
Best Regional Building Society
Monmouthshire Building Society
2nd: Cumberland Building Society
3rd: Leek United Building Society
Best Local Building Society
Market Harborough Building Society
2nd: Mansfield Building Society
3rd: Loughborough Building Society
Best Lifetime Mortgage Provider
LV=
2nd: Just Retirement
3rd: Aviva Equity Release
Best Buy-to-Let Mortgage Provider
NatWest
2nd: BM Solutions
3rd: Nottingham Building Society
Best Adviser-Only Lender
Accord
2nd: Alliance & Leicester Intermediary Services
3rd: NatWest Intermediary Solutions
Best Online Lender
Nationwide Building Society
2nd: Market Harborough Building Society
3rd: Britannia
Best Overall Insurance Provider
LV=
2nd: Santander
3rd: Paymentshield
DETAILS OF THE WINNERS IN THE NOMINATED CATEGORIES
Community Services Award for Large Lenders
Winner: Coventry Building Society
Coventry Building Society’s community work is wide-ranging, from support for national good causes, donations to small local charities and community groups, through to educational initiatives with local schools.
The society has its own community champions – volunteers who co-ordinate community and charity work alongside their normal roles. A three-year partnership with Age UK has raised tens of thousands of pounds but staff also receive training and give their time visiting, befriending and assisting older people, escorting them on doctors or hospital appointments, supporting social introductions or helping with shopping and driving.
An ongoing partnership with The Royal British Legion continues to flourish. The first Poppy one-year fixed rate bond led to a £1.6 million donation to The Legion’s Poppy Appeal, based on the amount invested. The range was extended to include Poppy Save, an easy access savings account, and a two-year Poppy Bond resulting in a further donation of £1.8 million.
To help improve financial literacy, staff have been working with teachers to deliver personal finance workshops at a local school for pupils aged 11 to 13; plus financial education measures for parents.
Highly Commended: Leeds Building Society
The community is integral to the culture of Leeds Building Society and its staff, who dedicate their time and raise funds in many different ways, year-in, year-out. Staff are encouraged to raise funds for worthy causes within their local communities and the society matches any sponsorship up to a maximum of £400 per member of staff. The society also supports national charity days such as Children in Need.
It offers the Caring Saver Account to members whereby the society donates 1 per cent of the total average balance split equally between four partner charities. Leeds Building Society Charitable Foundation has a team of staff working proactively with charities and supporting them with their applications. The Foundation has donated over £935,000 to 1,500 worthy causes since its launch.
Community Services Award for Small to Medium Sized Lenders
Winner: Principality Building Society
One of the Principality’s four brand values is entitled “Close to our Communities” and the society has a long history of supporting community life throughout Wales. Principality celebrated its 150th anniversary this year by launching a Big Birthday Giveaway campaign, donating £25,000 shared between five community projects across Wales. Staff also nominate their Charity of the Year and £227,000 has been raised in four years.
Branch staff lend support to projects in their local area, such as landscaping hospital gardens, helping at a community centre and local school outdoor learning environments, educating primary school children about saving and painting the facilities at a community centre, school and charity shop. The society has also lent its office meeting facilities to the Prince’s Trust.
Maximising the society’s sponsorship programme has played an important part in reaching out to the community, particularly through grass-roots sponsorship of the premier league rugby and football clubs.
Highly Commended: Newbury Building Society
Newbury’s main community initiative is Junior Newbury Building Society (JNBS) where children aged seven to 11 are encouraged to save through a branch at their
school. This enables the society to contribute to the local community in a way
that is relevant to its business. The pilot program started in 2008, with JNBS branches in three local schools. It’s gone from strength to strength and there are now six branches.
Year six pupils set up and run the JNBS branch at their school, overseen by a teacher. Pupils apply for jobs and are interviewed by a real member of society staff, who also regularly visits the branch. There are 46 pupils being trained to operate the branches for the 2010/2011 school year. Interactive training sessions for JNBS staff are also held at Newbury’s head office and all JNBS staff visit a working branch.
Innovator Award for Lenders
Winner: Lloyds TSB
Home Harmony is a free telephone and web-based concierge service available to mortgage customers for a full year after buying their property to help them ease into their new home. Home Harmony provides a professional team of lifestyle managers who are available 24 hours a day to offer advice on DIY, home improvement or anything family or lifestyle related. They can also help customers get to know their local area, whether it be getting to know about yoga classes or information on schools or the Scouts. Customers receive access to the database of fully-vetted suppliers from gardeners and cleaners to handymen and plumbers. For example, a family with young children was able to locate a drum teacher with his own studio, thereby reducing the noise at home and avoiding the need to buy a drum kit.
Highly Commended: Yorkshire Building Society
The Rollover Mortgage is for borrowers entering the final years of their mortgage and who want flexibility. It offers a rolling one-year fixed rate available to borrowers who have at least 65 per cent equity in their property. The product carries a one-off fee of £495 as well as added incentives of free legal assistance, a free valuation and optional free comprehensive home and contents insurance. At the end of each year, borrowers are notified of the new fixed rate offered for the following year of their mortgage and will automatically ‘rollover’ onto that rate, or they can choose to transfer their loan to either the society’s standard variable rate or another remortgage deal.
Innovator Award for Non-Lenders
Winner: xit2
xit2 has restructured its business around three core service areas - asset management, valuation management and conveyancing management. The three services are designed to allow lenders to mitigate risk by creating a panel of professional service suppliers, be they conveyancing solicitors, surveyors, asset managers or arrears counsellors, and then manage those suppliers online.
Through its web-based data exchanges, xit2’s cutting edge technology connects all the parties involved in a property transaction. Lenders can now track all work undertaken and bring improved third-party oversight to the property processes, as well as providing lenders with better management information without compromising internal controls. It also promises all data exchanged between parties will be transmitted swiftly and securely.
Highly Commended: Ethicall Field Services
Ethicall offers field services to the mortgage and lending industry and was nominated for its arrears management work with Nemo Personal Finance. Ethicall uses only fully employed, lending-industry experienced field agents to engage with customers. Together with state-of-the-art technology, Ethicall has yielded excellent results for Nemo. An uplift in contact rates enabled Nemo to talk to more customers helping to provide a working solution to their financial situations. The IT system shortens instruction times, improves speed and accuracy of reporting, and returns reporting timescales reducing both cost and rework.
Excellence in Treating Customers Fairly – Lenders
Winner: Yorkshire Building Society
The Yorkshire has a comprehensive TCF programme and ‘fairness’ has been one of its four group values since the start of the decade. Yorkshire has one of the lowest ‘complaints overturn rate’ published by the Financial Ombudsman Service in the finance sector, better than any major high street bank.
Customer feedback mechanisms show that over 80 per cent of customers perceive the Yorkshire to be fair. Members of the society are invited to comment through the Member Forum, Member Roadshows, telephone feedback and surveys. This has resulted in various changes, for example, to letter writing style, call handling service and product design. Customer facing staff are the ‘eyes and ears’ of the business and staff can challenge issues such as policy processes on behalf of customers.
Highly Commended: Coventry Building Society
Coventry has a thorough TCF policy and a low ratio of customer complaints. It is the largest UK financial services company to never have featured in a Financial Ombudsman Service report. Some examples of TCF at the Coventry include mortgage products which are equally available to new and existing customers, no matter which channel they choose to use, so there is no dual-pricing. The society listens to customers through its Members’ Council, Members’ eForum and Member Roadshows. Performance is closely monitored through a range of management information, including regular customer surveys, and TCF goes to board level.
Highly Commended: Darlington Building Society
Darlington has introduced a Code of Ethics that was written by the society’s own staff. The ethics statement is: “We will always aim to treat people with honesty and integrity, putting the interests of our members first.” Among other things the code includes the society’s existing five TCF statements of best practice, commitment to colleagues, responsible approach in product development and marketing, support and ongoing commitment to the local community and a cost saving ethic.
Excellence in Treating Customers Fairly – Non-Lenders
Capital Fortune
Capital Fortune is a firm of independent mortgage advisers. It has a Customer First Charter and has chosen to go over and above the standards required by a network.
The firm reviews every client for feedback which is consistently high - on average 96 per cent of clients rate its service between very good and excellent. Its promotional material, including its website, is jargon free and aims to be clear, fair and not misleading. The website has recently been awarded a Google page rank 5.
Capital Fortune uses TCF as a significant tool for business development and says that for every ten clients it receives on average four referrals on an annualised basis.
Highly Commended: Optima Legal
TCF principles are embedded within Optima Legal’s operation. The law firm has a mandatory annual e-learning programme for all employees who undertake a detailed audit to test their level of understanding of TCF principles. These principles are incorporated into the firm’s performance management objectives for all employees and if they fail the TCF audit section of their appraisal, they become ineligible for any bonus scheme, no matter how good their financial performance. Optima Legal has also partnered with the Money Advice Trust and makes donations to help fund National Debtline, the free, independent debt helpline run by the charity.
Best Debt and Arrears Management Strategy
Winner: Principality Building Society
In 2008 Principality embarked on a programme of changes and improvements to its arrears management systems and procedures, which are now fully implemented. The overall strategy was to fully automate internal procedures, freeing up staff to spend more time with borrowers and other agencies that could provide help. The society is now seeing the benefits, including a reduction in the number of new arrears cases, more sustainable ‘arrangements’ and forbearance solutions, better recovery rates and fewer repossessions than expected. It has also been able to avoid increasing the size of the arrears team, thereby keeping costs at the same levels for the last two years.
Highly Commended: Lloyds Banking Group
Lloyds Banking Group’s huge mortgage collections team, now numbering 1,100 people, was formed following the integration of Lloyds TSB with HBOS in January 2009. The bank set up a pre-arrears service to provide dedicated help, support and treatments to mortgage customers facing financial difficulties. It also launched specialist Toolkit teams in each of its sites, covering all of its brands. In order to help customers at the later stages of collections, the bank has worked with its solicitor partners to provide ongoing help and solutions at each of the five key stages of the litigation process.
Best Ecological/Green Award
Leeds Building Society
There are a whole host of green initiatives going on at Leeds Building Society. The head office refurbishment programme consisted of reducing power consumption, reducing cost, reducing carbon footprint, increasing recycling and reducing landfill. It has also introduced waste recycle facilities for the recycling of batteries and glass in addition to waste paper, plastics and cardboard.
Head office has also got its own roof top garden and beehive, which were introduced in June with a volunteer gardening club established to maintain the area. The honey bees and garden are thriving with fresh produce being supplied to the society’s café. Furthermore the society can lay claim to having the first roof top hive in Yorkshire.
Over the past four years significant changes have been made to mortgage lending processing by introducing a document image workflow that has resulted in an entirely paper-free process. In 2009 the society stopped sending paper offers to solicitors saving around 301,000 sheets of paper plus 15,000 A4 envelopes each year, including associated printer toner and energy usage. Paper reduction has also been achieved as borrowers, savers and introducers can apply online.
In July Leeds was the first building society to be awarded the Carbon Trust Standard for reduction in carbon emissions at its head office. To date the standard has been awarded to just 345 organisations nationally of which 13 are in the financial services sector.
Best Use of Technology
Winner: Countrywide Surveying Services
All the firm’s surveyors use Tablet PCs to complete valuations onsite, supported by Enterprise software, and this has transformed the way the firm operates. For lenders the technology speeds up the service to enhance the mortgage application and underwriting process. The technology ensures that all necessary fields of the report have been completed and the software then processes the report for ‘electronic doorstep sign off’.
The Enterprise software was specially designed by Countrywide’s surveyors and IT department to be adaptable and fast so it delivers results for clients, regardless of how complex or demanding their needs might be. Enterprise can fully integrate itself with client systems and there is a standalone website that enables clients to view all active and historic surveys. The technology is continually evolving to reflect clients’ needs and to support industry changes, e.g. Home Reports.
Highly Commended: Northern Rock
Northern Rock designed its mortgage website to be a one-stop-shop aiming to take the complexity out of the mortgage selection process. The site provides a range of features, such as a budget planner, overpayment calculator and a tool allowing customers to view the impact of possible rate changes on their product.
Results have been positive since its launch in April with the average time on site increasing by 126 per cent, visits to the ‘Apply Now’ section are up by 17 per cent, there has been a 3 per cent increase in new customers and a 4 per cent rise in returning customers. The number of people expressing an interest in applying for a mortgage rose by 22 per cent and the cost per acquisition fell by 27 per cent.
Best Use of Technology by Technology Providers
Winner: The Charlbury Group
Since its launch in 2008 the Arrears Management System developed by The Charlbury Group now manages integrations between 28 firms in the mortgage market. Since being highly commended in last years’ MFG awards the system has been expanded and developed into new parts of the arrears and repossession process connecting lenders with even more of their suppliers and creating efficiencies and greater control in new areas of their business.
The initial Arrears Management System connected lenders with their asset managers. In 2010 the Arrears Management System was developed to provide the technology to seamlessly connect lenders with their panel of litigation solicitors and LPA receivers.
Highly Commended: DPR Consulting
DPR Consulting’s end-to-end mortgage origination and servicing platform has recently gone live with new lender Aldermore Mortgages. DPR’s solution is a single, connected system that takes every case all the way from initial broker enquiry through online KFI, DIP/AIP, electronic application, underwriting, offer, completion, funds release, servicing and collections. Underwriters, customer service agents and finance users are presented with an easy to use front-end that includes a colour-coded task list, integrated document management and a library of wizards that helps simplify common tasks.
Highly Commended: DST Global Solutions
DST Global Solutions’ AWD Business Process Management application is used by Kent Reliance Building Society and manages its business processes across the society’s different regions. The daily post is scanned and imaged at the society's offices in Kent and automatically prioritised and routed to KRBS’ processing operations in Bangalore and Pune in India. The majority of the routine work is then completed off-shore, but quality review and exception processing is performed in the UK, using the prioritisation and work delivery capability of the AWD application.
Best Anti-Fraud Measure
Winner: CoreLogic Solutions
CoreLogic Solutions has developed FraudMark, a solution that uses advanced pattern-matching technology to assess and score individual mortgage applications for fraud risk. It uses a large, proprietary data consortium and can sit alongside Hunter or SIRA.
The core output of FraudMark is a score – ranging from 1 to 999, with 999 representing the highest fraud risk applications. For high-scoring cases, the output also specifies the fraud risk type(s) that have been identified such as identity, valuation, employment, income, occupancy, undisclosed debts as well as identifying solicitors, brokers and accountants who are acting in a fraudulent manner. FraudMark not only identifies mortgage fraud rings and other types of ‘hard’ fraud, it also isolates cases where there is evidence of material misrepresentation.
Highly Commended: Quest
Quest’s AuditSure system, part of the Q-Guard range, has been designed to support surveyors in managing valuation risk. It adds a further layer of security in the lending process by providing audited data to lenders and insurers regarding the surveying firms’ quality assurance with regards to the accuracy of its valuation surveys. AuditSure does this by providing the survey firm with a rules-based tool that checks valuation data using the Calnea AVM and property comparable data from Land Registry. It immediately alerts the audit team to potential risks for further investigating and works alongside surveyor’s existing audit processes.
Individual Achievement Award
Phillippa Cardno, Newbury Building Society
Phillippa Cardno is assistant general manager customer services at Newbury Building Society. She has made a major contribution in creating the legal and operational framework whereby lenders and residential social landlords are both willing to participate in future shared ownership lending. Phillippa has taken the lead over the last two years in breaking down some of the barriers that existed between local government, trade associations, housing associations and lenders. As a result, the lending industry achieved agreement from the Homes and Community Agency that a new lease (including a ’mortgagee protection’ clause) would be issued for all new purchases from April 2010.
Phillippa helped to produce the Council of Mortgage Lenders and National Housing Federation Service Standard Agreement, which sets out the minimum standards both sides should expect from each other when dealing with shared ownership arrears cases. She has given up her time to attend meetings and has spoken at the NHF and CML Shared Ownership Conference, housing associations and other lenders - something she willingly does in the furtherance of helping people take their first step onto the property ownership ladder.
Leadership Award
Stephen Noakes, commercial director, Lloyds Banking Group Mortgages
Stephen Noakes has played a key leadership role in managing the integration of the HBOS mortgage business and brands into the Lloyds stable. He has been extremely active this year working in the interests of two particular groups of customers within the mortgage market – homeowners and first time buyers. Stephen has been vocal in both print and broadcast media encouraging homeowners to overpay on their mortgage while rates are historically low as it can cut years off a mortgage and save thousands of pounds in interest.
In the first-time buyer market, Stephen led his team in the development under the Lloyds TSB brand of the Lend a Hand Mortgage. This product opens up the market to prospective homeowners with deposits as small as 5 per cent by inviting family or friends of the borrower to open a savings account with sufficient funds to make up the rest of the deposit.
