The Truss effect: 'Rates talk is louder since the mini-budget'

Award-winning brokerage exec on shortest-serving PM's legacy

The Truss effect: 'Rates talk is louder since the mini-budget'

The debate around mortgage interest rates has intensified since the Liz Truss mini-budget, suggests an executive behind award-winning broker, LDN Finance.

Few will forget the notorious budget from the short-lived Tory Prime Minister in 2022, but it seems the impact of her disastrous tenure has endured far longer than her 49 days in office.

Anthony Rose (pictured), co-CEO of LDN Finance, acknowledges that the market has seen some turbulence around rates in recent months, but he believes a greater focus on market movements highlights rate changes more than before.

“Since the Truss budget, the conversation around interest rates has become a lot louder,” Rose told Mortgage Introducer. “To a large extent, it is just normal market movements, but it seems to have found a much louder voice. Obviously, the market is very sensitive in responding to the various factors that we all know have an impact on swap rates.

“A broker's job is to explain to a client that, yes, we may have had a conversation three months ago and the rate was point one lower than it is today, but that is just the nature of the market. The general direction of travel, looks like - from a market perspective -  it is going to be down over the next 18 months.

“People are probably paying a bit more attention to it than they need to because the one thing, as brokers, we literally have no impact over is what the rates are. So, I think it is about explaining, on a client level, that there are normal fluctuations in the market, rates will go up and down around small margins, but that is just how the market responds to stuff. That is a client management and education piece for brokers.”

Read more: Has the UK mortgage market finally recovered from Liz Truss?

How can mortgage brokers maximise business?

Founded almost eight years ago, LDN Finance picked up the title of London Broker of the Year at The Mortgage Introducer Awards 2024, so it certainly knows a thing or two about success. Rose who co-founded the firm and leads a team of 21 mortgage advisers, believes that to maximise business, brokers need to take advantage of the different products they can offer.

“We have separate advisers for protection,” Rose shared. “So the mortgage advisers, write the mortgages and the protection advisers have business referred to them from the mortgage advisers, and I think from an income generating perspective, we find that is a much better model because the protection advisers are experts in their field and have the time and expertise to deal with those clients properly.

“A good brokerage has good systems, good infrastructure, good support systems in as much as the administrators, who are often very much unsung heroes and assist the brokers on their cases. Having that that core strength behind the firm is a vital importance. For individual brokers, the biggest control they have over their earning potential is to look after their clients as best they can, to make sure they come back to them and refer other people that need their services.”

He added: “It is about quick communication, making sure that you're as available as you can be with clients and recognising that, whether it's buying a house or refinancing, it's often the most important thing that's going on for that individual at that point in time, and therefore to really roll out the red carpet. Understand the market that you're working in so that you're confident that you're giving the client the best options possible.”

What, then, is the biggest business lesson Rose has learned in his career so far?

“It is a cyclical market,” he said, “so just be conscious that you have to have one eye on what can always be around the corner because  the market can move quickly and I think that's both from an offering perspective, but also from a firm management perspective, always to be very, very conscious that it's a market of ups and downs and you just have to make sure you can cover both elements.”