What’s Been Going On?

As we move into October with a full team, we have had a lot going on! We have been bursting to tell everyone we have a new adviser!

Congratulations to Yasmin who has passed her Protection exams and is seeing appointments already. If you have ever had a mortgage case complete with us, the chances are you will have spoken to Yasmin.

She will be taking on a dual role of continuing with progressing mortgage cases to completion, whilst seeing clients who need life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection.

Yasmin was the first member of staff that Kate employed, and to see her progress, and step out of her comfort zone has made everyone extremely proud.

It’s been wonderful to have a busy diary with our external providers again this month. Thank you Sue and Michaela from The Co Operative Bank who popped in with afternoon tea for the team recently. Asia and Kelly had their second afternoon tea of the month, attending the ‘Pink Afternoon Tea Party’ hosted by Vitality, which is a regional event to celebrate women in the protection industry.

The advisers have also had refresher training from two of our protection providers, Zurich and Holloway Friendly, and we also welcomed Debbie Holmes from Tipton & Coseley into our Birmingham office for a criteria and product refresher.

Kelly and Louise were invited to a morning of training and hospitality with Skipton Building Society at their Solihull branch, which they both really enjoyed and gained a lot of insight and information from.

Kate has had a very busy month of eventing! She was lucky enough to be selected to attend the prestigious ‘Recognising Elite’ overseas event hosted by Primis Mortgage Network for the second consecutive year – this year was in the beautiful Valencia.

Kate has also been to two industry gala events in London this month. The first was hosted by Accord Mortgages, and the second with Barclays, which Kelly also joined her for. Thank you to Accord and Barclays for their excellent hospitality!

In The News

After 14 consecutive hikes, the Bank of England base rate stayed the same in the September review, holding at 5.25%, after an unexpected drop in inflation in September. There was a huge sigh of relief across our offices to say the least!

There has been a surge of lenders reducing rates and it has been refreshing to speak to our clients with good news.

If you have an existing case or a new enquiry and want to know how this affects you, please get in touch. The next review is due on 2 November 2023.

What’s coming up?

Half term is fast approaching.

Do you work in education and have the week off? It could be the perfect opportunity to book in and get mortgages and protection policies reviewed before 2023 is out. Last push to get them off your ‘To Do List’.

Protection Focus- Why you may have had a missed call from us?

We are calling our clients where we can see that we have arranged a mortgage for you but the protection part isn’t yet finalised. So if you have missed a call, this may be why.

Why is protection so important?

It always has been important, but now even more than ever. The higher mortgage rates we have experienced have meant higher mortgage payments for most people, in turn meaning there could be a greater chance of problems financially if the worst were to happen. This coupled with the cost-of-living increases means we want to ensure that we have done our job thoroughly and checked that you have sufficient cover in place to protect you home, family and income, no matter what life throws at you.

Congratulations to Claire who is our Employee of the Month! Claire is an administrator who works across both of our offices and has put herself out there to learn new things, adapted to working in different capacities and has really enhanced her knowledge on cases by asking questions and challenging things, and has also significantly increased her case numbers over the last couple of months.

Well done Claire!

I am extremely excited for the future with the team expanding and members of our team taking on more challenging roles. It puts us in such a good place to help our clients with the wealth of experience we now have in Mortgages and Protection, and as a business owner it’s really pleasing to know we are doing something right to have such quality in the staff we retain and recruit.

We have had more interaction with lenders this month, and it has been a challenge trying to find time in the diary for everything. Without jinxing things, it has been the most normal month we have had in a long time.

The steady reduction in rates from lenders has been a welcome change to the emails I usually wake up to, and the phone calls from clients who already have mortgages agreed but want to see if there are any better products out there before they complete. We are being proactive in our approach to choosing more competitive products for our current pipeline cases and contacting customers with options of better deals which is really satisfying.

Settled and calmer would definitely best describe the last month or so. It has been a very different market place since the news of the Bank Of England base rate staying still.

Autumn has started on the right foot and will hopefully continue to keep this way.

Take care until next time!