Being 'forced into the office' during the pandemic made him reappraise his career
Few people, perhaps, would choose reading a CeMAP text book over swimming with turtles, but so committed was Steve Humphrey (pictured) to becoming a mortgage broker that he passed up the opportunity to stay focused on his studies. With a background in sales and customer services and keen to join a profession that required a professional qualification, Humphrey began studying for his industry exams while on a global trip that included a stay in Thailand.
“I remember quite clearly, one day my wife was snorkelling,” he recalled. “She said, ‘Come down, I’ve found all these turtles.’ I said, ‘No, I've got my CeMAP to study.’ I'm quite focused. I was quite determined to join the industry, so I arrived back in the UK after a two-year around the world trip and sat my CeMAP 1, 2 and 3 exams within the first few weeks.” Whether Humphrey’s wife – or indeed the turtles – ever forgave him, we may never know, but his commitment certainly paid off. The fact that he had been studying for his professional qualification while travelling went down well when he was interviewing for his first employed role within the industry.
Ultimately, Humphrey’s experience in that trainee role led him to quit and set up his own business, The Mortgage Pod. “I had five or six promotions and then I reached a point where my personal values no longer aligned with my employer’s values if you like, they were very different,” he explained. “I felt they weren't customer-centric. It was a bit more of a sales-based organisation and I reached the point where I couldn't progress any further in that company.”
Like many in the fallout from COVID, Humphrey reappraised what he wanted – and a big factor was how his employer responded to the pandemic. “In my opinion, the way that the whole lockdown thing was managed wasn't great,” he said. “For a very, very brief period I worked from home but they got us back into the office as quickly as physically possible. They kind of forced people into the office, in open plan offices of 12 of us, even when the advice was to work from home where possible, and the attitude was very much, ‘We don't believe that you’ll work to the best of your ability from home, managing yourself.’ Post-COVID, I made a decision that actually I believe that I can work from home and motivate myself.
“I saw that things were going online. I saw the way that the client requirements were changing. I saw that customers no longer needed or wanted to arrange their mortgage face-to-face in an office at an inconvenient time. I wanted to do it my way. I was certain that I could offer a better experience, a more flexible journey for buyers, so I decided to take a punt. I started by doing some appointments face-to-face, but after probably six months I decided that we'd become very much an online business.”
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Building mortgage relationships with clients for the long-term
Establishing The Mortgage Pod in late 2021, and working from a garden office, enabled Humphrey to spend more time with his baby son. He oversees a team of four, all working remotely. “Part of our ethos is that we want everybody that's associated with this business to have a positive experience, whether that be employed, self-employed, whether that be customers,” he said. “We take our children to school, we pick them up from school - that's always a priority. We work around our individual personal commitments, and we have a relaxed approach.”
Today Humphrey specialises in advice for business owners and directors, but the business was initially set up with a focus on first-time buyers, whom it still supports too. Catching this part of the market naturally builds a longer-term client base.
“We do the best we can for them, and then, from a business point of view, two or five years later, they'll become our remortgage customers,” he noted. “We want to build 30 to 35-year relationships with our customers, if that's for how long they've got a mortgage. We'll manage everything, we'll track the dates of their fixed products, we'll maintain a communication with them. We would like to guide and support people. It's not just about mortgage rates, it's not about interest rates, or the fine numbers necessarily, it's about a holistic support offering. Our customers’ journey and genuine guidance is what we’re about as a business - we want to give them zero reason to ever go elsewhere.
Humphrey is undoubtedly ambitious in his aims but modest about how he wants to scale the business. “We don’t need hundreds of clients, just good people who appreciate high quality advice from other good people!” he said. “We don’t want to be the biggest business, we don’t need to be a multi-million business - that’s not what we’re aiming to be. We just want to focus on quality.”
