Platform admitted that it could be forced to make up to 65 staff redundant as a result of the continued liquidity crisis engulfing the financial services sector.
Following a discussion on the institution’s future, the decision was taken to restructure the lender, which would include a review of staffing levels.
Platform, the intermediary arm of Britannia, admitted that it would focus its attention on its packager partners and direct customers, which would include the formation of a lending services operation and a proposition department to combine the marketing, product development and e-commerce departments.
The move followed earlier suggestions that the lender had placed over 100 of its staff on notice. David Tweedy, managing director at Platform, admitted up to 65 people could be made redundant from the business applications and sales teams, but insisted that there would be no servicing and support team redundancies.
He said: “Up to 65 people could be made redundant but we would look at all opportunities in the groups’ wider structure first to see if we can place staff in these vacancies.”
Tweedy also stated that the streamlined approach that Platform had undertaken as part of the restructure would help it when the market returned, as it would be forging closer balances between its structure of market sectors, including buy-to-let, non-conforming and prime.
He added: “Nobody can predict the future of the market but it will, at some point, return and when it does there will be opportunities. Our positioning will hopefully allow us to take advantage of these.”
A spokesperson for the lender also confirmed that it had allocated £1 billion worth of funding for mortgages in 2008, and following the announcement a Mortgage Introducer source suggested that Platform would be looking to follow GMAC-RFC’s field-based operational support managers in re-aligning its strategy. It also indicated that the lender would withdraw onsite and mobile underwriters.
The credit crunch affecting the market has also led to another lender committing to job cuts, with Lehman Brothers confirming that it is to scale back its numbers with the announcement that it is to cull 200 of its UK workforce, but insisted that it had a viable future.
Having already cut a number of jobs in Autumn 2007, a statement by the organisation stated that the ‘severe dislocation in the mortgage markets’ had forced it to cut its staffing levels, but insisted that it would be able to continue to serve the intermediary market.
A statement by the organisation added its commitment to technology and the broker community: ‘We will maintain our technology development programme, covering point of sale and application processing positioning for the future.
‘Lehman Brothers’ mortgage servicing business within Capstone Mortgage Services Limited will continue to offer the same high standards of service to existing customers.’
One source said: “SPML and Preferred Mortgages made heavy criteria changes which priced them out of the competitive market, a day before the Lehman’s announcement.”
Another Mortgage Introducer source, admitted: “It is the blackest week on record.”
