COVER FEATURE


“After I completed my degree I got a job at Procter & Gamble,” he


says. “I was making 35 tons of soap powder an hour, so I learnt all about Daz, Ariel and Bold. I essentially learnt that chemical engineering is about the management of people and projects.” His time at the company also taught him the importance of a good sales and marketing strategy. “It became obvious to me that companies are led by their sales


and marketing strategies rather than their manufacturing capa - bilities,” he says. When he graduated in 1982 the technological world was just


 I’m hoping in the future the market will see us as a successful company that has continued to grow from where we are now


taking off in the UK, and computers and the worldwide web still hadn’t found their way into the working lives of many. Lofthouse, however, decided that it was this world that he wanted to become part of. After leaving Procter & Gamble he took a year’s sabbatical where he travelled from London to Johannesburg. On his return in 1990 he took a job selling insurance systems in a Cumbrian firm, which went on to become ACT Financial Systems. “I wanted to get into technology,


which was developing at a fast pace,” he says.


Being in Cumbria also allowed him to indulge in his other passion – Carlisle United. “Between the ages of seven and 11, I used to go to every home game,” he adds.


But his love for Carlisle United was not enough to keep him in Cumbria and in 1998 he joined Assureweb in Cheltenham, where he


built its portal for financial advisers. This led to being offered the job at Mortgage Brain, having shown he had a flair for technology.


EMBRACING TECHNOLOGY When he joined Mortgage Brain it had a turnover of about £2m and only carried out mortgage sourcing. It was the era of paper applications for brokers, but the lenders that had bought into Mortgage Brain were keen to bring the market up to speed and wanted Lofthouse to develop a trading exchange where brokers could submit their applications online. “Mortgage Brain was a one-product company that had done well, but it needed to be taken to the next level,” he says.


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It launched the Mortgage Trading Exchange in 2003 and today


around 20% of mortgage applications from brokers are carried out through it. The firm’s next milestone was when it bought point-of-sale


system The Key in 2006, which was developed by Trigold sourcing system founder Peter Heigho. Lofthouse claims it was in a fledgling state, with just a handful


of customers and in need of substantial investment. “We made the necessary investment at the time and have con -


tinued to do so,” he says. “It is now well established with networks and brokers.” Other providers had launched point-of-sale systems ready for


Mortgage Day in October 2004 when the Financial Services Authority first regulated the mortgage industry. “There were systems that were built before Mortgage Day which


typically tried to cover compliance – they were the first wave of systems,” says Lofthouse. “The Key was the first system of its kind where it was all about point-of-sale and broker efficiency as well as all the compliance requirements. We knew what the reality of regulation was, whereas any systems built prior to Mortgage Day were only what people thought the compliance regime would be.” The MTE now has 6,000 contracted users and 3,700 active users.


BACK ON TRACK Prior to the credit crunch in 2008, Mortgage Brain looked invincible, but it was obviously affected like everyone else. “Revenues in the mortgage market dropped by 60% from where


they were in their peak,” says Lofthouse. “We downsized and our revenues dropped 15%. But revenue has grown by 4% in the year to March 2011 and we’re forecasting an increase of between 10% and 20% in the next two years.” Lofthouse puts the increase down to more people adopting The


Key and the new version of Mortgage Brain’s sourcing system, which launched in 2010. Another area where the firm expects growth in the coming year is its mobile phone technology, specifically a mortgage application for consumers. Some brokers heavily criticised Mortgage Brain in 2010 when they mistakenly thought the firm was branching out into a mortgage search facility for consumers. What Mortgage Brain was actually doing was providing a white-labelled search facility on brokers’ websites that allowed consumers to search for a mortgage and then


MORTGAGE STRATEGY April 9, 2012


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