ost for business t working month. How did it affect your business?
The double bank holiday in April was unusual, but certainly wasn’t anything which should faze any business with sufficient levels of planning. Most businesses are used to employees taking time off over
Easter, particularly those with families but the double bank holiday enabled people to take over a couple of weeks in exchange for a few days holiday. Indeed, all successful businesses are used to quieter periods during the year and factor them into their business plans.
For example, employee numbers drop during the summer holiday as people head for the sun but business doesn’t stop. The organisation simply ensures it has sufficient employees in place to keep the operation running effectively. Many businesses likened the period to Christmas mark II, but that certainly wasn’t the case at Paragon. Obviously, the offices are quieter but things must still get done. Paragon has to ensure that it continues to sell buy-to- let mortgages and underwrite them effectively. We have to make sure that our existing customers are properly serviced and that intermediaries can get hold of us at any time if they have enquiries. In addition, the show must go on for support services, including marketing, HR, IT, legal, etc. In fact, Paragon decided to use the quieter period to our advantage, relaunching the Mortgage Trust brand and our new online application facility,
www.MTon-line.co.uk. This enabled us to stress test the new facility in a live environment and to ensure that it was fully functional and operated in the manner in which we wanted.
Relaunching a new brand during this period could be viewed as odd timing but we appreciate that mortgage intermediaries still need to offer a quality service to their clients and wouldn’t be quietening down significantly during this period.
The levels of interest and enquiries we have received since launch justifies our decision and our teams were extremely busy dealing with intermediaries during this period.
John Heron, managing director, Paragon Mortgages
Despite the wedding and all the days off, total mortgage approvals rose 1.8% in April, up from 47,577 in March to 48,435. That made it the fourth consecutive month of growth as the market continued to crawl back to health. But those stats don’t tell the whole story. Year on year volumes
were down 2.5% in April. Was this down to the wedding? I don’t think so. Volumes were down 2.9% year on year, in March, too – I think the dip was part of a wider trend. The month on month increase had more to do with lenders looking to bring in new business after the sluggish winter. Lenders had been tentatively offering high loan to value products for some time and In April they started loosening their criteria slightly. So while volumes were down compared to April 2010, this
wasn’t a surprise for us and we had planned and budgeted for it. Daily run rates were lower but not lower than we anticipated. Whilst the holidays did rob us of business in the short term, April and May should generate a “catch up” backlog as people deferred decisions. That’s good news for brokers because they should see this coming out in the wash by the end of May. But the profile of brokers’ commission payments may shift and with cashflow management still so important, that may cause some difficulties.
The holidays slowed new instructions to the estate agency brands within our parent group, LSL Property Services. Your Move and Reeds Rains were affected but equally they had the opportunity to give prospective vendors and purchasers the time to think about listing and viewing properties. That bodes well for the future. On a more practical level, the unusual configuration of bank holidays called for a novel approach to staffing within
e.surv. We planned ahead and had valuers working over weekends and bank holidays. That was fine but because of the festivities some customers were understandably reluctant to allow access. But it wasn’t just valuers we needed to marshal; typists and support staff also covered weekends to ensure our broker clients who weren’t off on holiday, weren’t disadvantaged either.
Richard Sexton, business
development director,
e.surv
sense. Do you want to be a part of the next Bigger Issue? Email
nia@thepublishinggroup.co.uk mortgAge introducer JUNE 2011 27
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