BestAdvice fires the questions at Tony Hall, head of business development, Saffron for Intermediaries.
BestAdvice (BA): What distinguishes Saffron for Intermediaries from its competitors?
Tony Hall (TH): We pride ourselves on our flexibility and our ability to support customers with complex sources of income. Saffron’s team is bursting with knowledgeable people who actively work with brokers to find solutions for them and their clients. We have a flexible approach which helps to get deserving customers the mortgage they need. We dive deeper into their circumstances to find a solution where other lenders may have refused them. Often we encounter brokers who think nobody can help their clients and who are pleasantly surprised when we say we can.
BA: How does Saffron for Intermediaries help advisers to provide the best support for clients?
TH: We pride ourselves on how closely we work with brokers to find solutions for their clients. If a broker or adviser has a question then our team is always on hand to help, and is willing to take the time to fully understand each case’s individual circumstances. Furthermore, our expertise in helping clients with more complex financial circumstances often means that we can support brokers’ clients when others can’t. It also means our BDM’s are particularly knowledgeable in areas such as self-build, large loans and complex income, and are on hand to support advisers in the event they haven’t had a lot of experience working with these kind of products.
In line with our solutions focused approach, we hold a daily “underwriter surgery” at half past nine every morning where the BDMs meet with our underwriters to try and find solutions to any more unusual cases that have come up the day before.
BA: What would you like to see Saffron for Intermediaries achieve in the next year?
TH: We’d love to see greater recognition of Saffron for Intermediaries as the home for complex mortgages. The more awareness among brokers of the wide range of solutions we provide, the better, especially on our large loan offerings. We are one of the few lenders who go up to £5m on standard rates and we’d like brokers to know that this option is available.
BA: Saffron for Intermediaries recently announced changes to maximum large loan sizes – what led you to take this step?
TH: With the market continuing to move as quickly as it is, it is even more important that we are continually listening to adviser and borrower feedback, and using it to refine our offering. We are seeing strong demand for larger loans from more affluent and high-net-worth customers, and we appreciate that these can be harder to source, so it was important that we took further steps to ensure we are evolving with the needs of the market.
BA: Custom-build and self-build mortgages are quite unconventional routes towards homeownership – how much demand are you seeing for these product types?
TH: We’re seeing strong demand for self-build and custom-build mortgages, and we expect it to grow year-on-year. On average, across developed countries, roughly 40% of all new homes are self-commissioned, with the figure as high as 60% in Austria. Meanwhile in the UK, just 7% of all new homes are self-commissioned, demonstrating the huge potential for self- and custom-build to support housing supply much more than it is at present.
Both custom-build and its better known cousin self-build are fantastic ways to craft your dream home, and we are proud to be offering flexible finance solutions at the forefront of this market.