If I was using an aircraft for business travel, I would have earned a mass of air miles by now. Representing Fluent for Advisers across the UK, I and my colleagues have really racked up the miles in the past 12 months but without the benefit of free flights to exotic places!
However, the most important part of my role is meeting adviser firms and network members across the UK and listening to their stories, issues and questions as I take the second charge message to an increasingly inquisitive audience.
One of the striking features of the Q&A sessions which inevitably follow presentations, is the number of times that advisers, particularly DA brokers, express disbelief at how much the second charge market has changed from the sector they remember or have been told about.
At many presentations, an interesting behaviour pattern has developed with some delegates. It starts from either hostility or indifference to the second charge message, moving to uncertainty then grudging acceptance and finally, if I have really hit my mark, acceptance and a positive Q&A session.
For all of us involved in the provision of secured loans there is still a lot for us to do to change out of date opinions or just lack of knowledge of the sector. Hard as it is to accept, particularly for those of us who have made a career in the secured loan market, the issues we face in terms of getting our message across post MCD stem from having largely ignored the wider adviser community as they have ignored us, up to this point.
It is hardly surprising from the reactions we are getting why it is taking longer to see significant volumes from an intermediary community that we have tended to ignore up to now.
There were many who believed that the regulator’s insistence that customers should be aware of a secured loan for capital raising in the aftermath of MCD, would see an immediate flood of new business. Think again. We have always had to make a proper business case if we are going to see secured loans properly recognised alongside remortgages. The regulator is not going to do our job for us.
At Fluent, our hard work is beginning to bear fruit and we are welcoming more business from brokers who would have never considered a secured loan in the past. 2017 will see more and more work being undertaken by Fluent, among others, to spread the word and provide the compelling evidence that second charge loans have a real place in the market.
Jeff Davidson is head of intermediaries at Fluent for Advisers