Fully aware that Scottish business represents a small proportion of the UK mortgage market they felt more could be done about representing their interests with lenders, regulators and the market at large. So Colin McCallum and David Boswell of Heritable Ltd have taken up the challenge of getting the Scottish Mortgage Alliance underway with the help of several founding organizations including Mortgage Healthcare Ltd and Independent Financial Solutions.
“We aim to raise the profile of our members, maintain high standards of regulation and enhance the Scottish brokers’ position in the market - rather than be a network that purely is a means for businesses to carry on trading. We will differ from other networks in many ways, but mainly because we will only represent Scottish brokers and their individual requirements. Thus we will always be small enough to react to our members needs but large enough to give them a much needed voice.”
Objectives
They are quick to stress that underpinning all they do is the main objective of delivering a high quality service to their clients. More specifically they intend to: -
Fulfilling these objectives, McCallum believes will be much dependant on his ability to consult and listen to brokers and to then draw upon the Alliance’s collective strength to support the individual broker firm.
Both McCallum and Boswell do not underestimate the work that has to be done. However, they consider that previous experience will stand them in good stead. McCallum previously held senior and executive management positions within the National Australia Banking group and prior to that worked as a management consultant with Coopers & Lybrand. For his part Boswell has extensive experience as a scientific researcher prior to joining McCallum in All Types of Mortgages (AToM), Scottish operation which started up two years ago. Both agree the experience and support of Vic Jannells of AToM has been vital to where they are today.
Response So Far
“We wrote to lenders at the outset and their response has been extremely encouraging. Not just in a self interested way but also they appear to give considerable support to our overall objectives. Those with an understanding of the Scottish legal system recognize the need for a body such as the Alliance.”
What McCallum refers to here is that under Scots law when an offer is made for a property and it is accepted then both parties to the sale have entered into a legally binding contract. One of the key outcomes of this is the potential to significantly reduce elapsed time between offer and settlement (completion). Whilst most England based lenders are aware of this aspect their operations areas have a tendency to forget and this can lead to complications, frustrations and worse of all poor/disastrous customer service.
Next Moves
The intention is to start up the Alliance with 30 member companies to ensure a period of learning and evolution with an easily manageable number. Once issues have been identified and resolved the Alliance will build up member companies to 100 within a two year period. The aspirational target ultimately is to get to a 500 strong membership which broadly represents 25% of the Scottish broker community.
Most of the 30 founding members already have been identified but if you want to be considered then contact Colin McCallum or David Boswell on 0131 272 2722.
