If you focus only on money, you'll make mistakes, mortgage boss warns
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Carol Brown’s route into mortgages came through an administrative role, but it was when she saw a broker vastly overcharging a client that she thought she could do a better job.
To Brown’s horror, the unscrupulous mortgage adviser charged a fee of £5,000, around 20 years ago, before the industry was regulated as it is today.
“I just sat there and thought ‘that’s horrendous, I am not allowing you to keep doing that, I'm going to do a proper job for them,’ and that's what I've done,” Brown (pictured left) told Mortgage Introducer. “I started training, and got all my financial advising qualifications. I absolutely love doing mortgages and I find it a real privilege, particularly with first-time buyers.
“You're really getting into their biggest event and their biggest debt, and it's just making sure you get that right - and I haven't charged anybody £5,000! The reason that broker was doing it was greed, and he was not putting the client first. He's now not in the industry, funnily enough.”
So, while the ne’er-do-well broker who unwittingly inspired Brown’s mortgage journey has since departed the sector, she very much remains, heading up her own business, First Choice Mortgage Company, in Newbury, Berkshire. With the same philosophy that motivated her entry into the business, Brown and her colleague, senior mortgage and protection adviser Sofie Collins (pictured right) aim to provide a fair service to their clients.
“I don't think it should be about money making,” Brown explained. “If you do a good job for your clients, you will make money. I've just done our accounts and we made more money than we did the year before, and that was through the Liz Truss months, which were very hard. If you chase money, you are going to make mistakes, because you are going to be recommending things for the wrong reason. If you look after your clients, you will make money, but you'll make it for the right reason.”
Collins added: “Our fee is £395 and they get a lot for that, trust me. I set up someone's council tax the other day because they were stuck!”
Read more: 'Mortgage industry could see huge loss of brokers over fee-free charging'
Award-winning customer focus
It's a customer-focused approach that’s helped define the success of First Choice Mortgage Company – it triumphed at The Mortgage Introducer Awards 2024, winning Broker Firm of the Year (up to 10 Advisers), because, Brown believes, its passion shines through. It has a clear attention to detail too.
“The one thing we do that really sets us apart, which other brokers don't do, is a free mortgage feasibility review, before we even expect people to go and start looking for properties,” she noted. “The reason that we started doing that is because it protects the credit score of the clients. It is to make sure they can afford the mortgage now and within the next five years. They can go out to estate agents and say, ‘I have been fully assessed for a mortgage, I want to make an offer’.”
Collins also believes the fact that only two of them operate within the firm gives it a hands-on appeal to clients.
“We're with clients literally from first touch,” she said. “They'll get to speak to me as soon as they come through, all the way to the day I call them to say, ‘You’ve completed, are you on the way to collect your keys?’ So there's no admin team, they will always speak to a mortgage professional. With the adverse credit cases which I do, a lot of it takes me a long time and it's quite complex and there are brokers who just couldn't be bothered to do it.”
The pair do online calls with clients, but believe it’s important to maintain a physical presence within a town centre office, and still carry out home visits too, particularly for older borrowers. Key to it all is maintaining a relationship and showing empathy, they believe.
“We've had people bring in their babies to show us that they've had two or three years after they've actually moved into their houses,” Brown said. “I helped one man arrange a night for him to propose to his girlfriend because he wanted to do it in Austria and they couldn't afford it. So we arranged an evening at the Winchester Christmas market, and he got down on one knee in the middle of the ice rink.
She added: “Mortgages are transactional in their nature, but our clients are not transactional. Our clients are people with lives, with problems, with emotions. We work so hard to make sure they're protected from anything that could happen to them, within that process and going forwards.”
Collins is open about the fact that she gets emotionally involved with clients. “I really want this for the client,” she shared.
Referring to the broker role, Collins added: “I would say you need experience and patience to be good. I know everybody has to start somewhere, but there's a broker who has just qualified, and there's a broker five years down the line who really comes into their own, who really understands it, and will think outside the box for solutions. You've got to know what you're talking about, and you've got to keep up with interest rates and what the market's doing, because otherwise you look silly. It takes time, definitely.”