The Interview
Are you being served?
Abbey for Intermediaries cares about service and Miguel Sard has spent his first ten months as managing director working out ways the lender can stay at the top of brokers’ preferred partner list. Sarah Davidson finds out more
Everybody hates bankers. Particularly at the moment. Brokers especially don’t trust bankers. The “you don’t love us as much as you love your branches” claim is muttered day in day out. And frankly with due cause. Even bankers don’t trust bankers.
But Miguel Sard is an anomaly. I have never heard one bad word uttered about the Abbey for Intermediaries’ new managing director. Not by lenders, not by networks, not by clubs, trade bodies or toughest of the tough to please, not by mortgage intermediaries. Given the number of bad words I hear said, it is worthy of remark. It’s not been easy. Last year the bank saw its former chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio walk out taking much of his senior management team with him to Lloyds Banking Group. Not to mention that the mortgage market is still lolling in the doldrums, Europe might or might not implode and banking regulation is tightening the screws so hard it’s pretty damn difficult to lend a penny. But the 46-year old Sard, new to the mortgage market as well as this role at Santander, is congenial, keyed into what intermediaries want and backed by a team who want badly to compete in Britain’s mortgage market. Sard should be good at brokers. His
professional background is heavily laced with time spent dealing with brokers of various sorts including insurance and investment in Spain. In the UK he’s worked closely with insurance brokers
since 2007 and he’s come at the mortgage intermediary market with the same commitment. “There’s a clear value in the service intermediaries offer – I really believe that,” says Sard. “Next year we want to grow and intermediaries are a big part of that future. I’ve spent the past ten months trying to get a feel for what brokers like about AfI and what they don’t like. They know us and they know what they’d like improved. It’s been a valuable insight into the market and how intermediaries think mortgage lending is developing.” Nevertheless it is quite a challenge he’s been handed.
The numbers The lender’s latest set of financial results admit the UK mortgage lending business suffered a 13% drop in gross mortgage lending over the year to Q3 2011 – the equivalent of 2.5% of its market share. It did £16.8bn gross in the year to Q3 2011 giving the lender an estimated new lending market share of 16.5%. Net mortgage lending meanwhile was £0.6bn in Q3 2011, up from £0.2bn in Q2 2011 – suggesting appetite to lend even if the environment was unforthcoming. “The market is changing and there
are shifts you can view as a threat or as opportunity,” says Sard. “2011 has been challenging for many reasons but we are doing the amount of business we budgeted for and 80% of that comes via intermediaries. “There are other strategies playing out
40 mortgAge introducer JANUARY 2012
in the market some of which work, others don’t. But our strategy is to support intermediaries and help them deliver more holistic advice in a market where that matters.”
sTeppIng up The challenges are manifold. Borrower appetite is low, confidence is shot and there is very little property on the market to buy. There is also a direct threat of lenders offering very cheap rates through branches only. But Sard has several ideas to keep Abbey on the map and he’s overseen some of the more interesting product innovation in the market in the past 12 months. Over the summer AfI ran eight weeks of rate sales lasting a week each. Fixed and tracker rates were also slashed again and again to try to tempt borrowers in.
It has been welcomed by brokers who, on balance, have good things to say about AfI’s offering.
buy-To-leT bulleT The silver bullet in Sard’s armoury was the gossip of 2011 and in the last few weeks it finally shot out of the barrel of the gun. AfI is in the non-professional end of the buy-to-let market. The lender is offering a 2-year fix at 4.29% available up to 60% loan to value and a 2-year fix at 5.19% available at up to 75% LTV.
Both deals come with a £1,495 fee with rental cover of 125% or above calculated
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