Are face-to-face meetings still necessary in the mortgage industry?

Yay

Sam Lea, business development manager, Dudley Building Society

Like most people, I found my working world turned upside down as Covid-19 swept the country. This led the society to take the difficult decision to pause new lending and focus on servicing our existing borrowers.

I have been one of the lucky ones, as we all have at Dudley, being able to work from home throughout the lockdown. This period also gave me a chance to reassess how my role as a BDM could work given the current and seemingly lasting restrictions.

Video conferencing has been around for years, but it’s only due to Covid that the business world has had to adopt it more widely. In our market I see this as a change for the better, creating efficiencies and time savings. Yet, speaking as someone who is very comfortable with technology, six months ago I would not have thought twice about jumping into my car and completing a five-hour round trip for an hour’s meeting. Today it has become second nature to arrange a Zoom or Teams call.

But I don’t believe face-to-face meetings will die out. Although video conferencing has many benefits, there is no doubt in my mind that in-person meetings are still the preferred method of communication for serious discussions or negotiations. There is no replacing some of the emotional and physical signals that can be picked up face to face, which are vital when building relationships and making important decisions.

Also, as the novelty has worn off I have started to notice lowering attention spans during video calls. It is much easier to be distracted when working at home – by incoming emails, the telephone ringing, the dog, the doorbell or social media – so ensuring that your audience is fully engaged can be a challenge.

That said, I think I speak for the majority of my peers when I say that many of the physical catchup calls that we used to make to our partners can be handled equally as well on Zoom, Teams or Facetime.

When the world opens up again, I can envisage managing my diary more effectively by hosting a mixture of both physical and virtual visits. Balancing the benefits of face to face with the efficiency of virtual meetings will definitely make me more popular with my finance director!

Nicola Firth, founder and chief executive, Knowledge Bank

The key here is deciding whether face-to-face meetings are necessary or just a ‘nice to have’.

There is no doubt that business is done over lunch, drinks, etcetera and, for established businesses or people who have already had the time to build up their connections and relationships, it’s perfectly possibly now to manage those online and for them to continue and thrive. However, it’s going to stifle the growth of newcomers to the industry if they aren’t able to attend events, meet people and make those personal connections.

Nevertheless, in the wider world people have successful online relationships both personally and professionally so, to that end, there is no real reason why this can’t be the case in our industry.

I think firms will base their decision whether to resume physical meetings on several factors.

The cost savings for businesses have been huge in terms of expense accounts so I wouldn’t be surprised to see policies implemented suggesting that meetings could or should be done online in the first instance, if appropriate. Also, we are hearing about productivity increasing as people spend less time travelling. This can have a positive effect on mental health and wellbeing because there isn’t the additional stress of travel, and it frees up valuable time to spend with family that wasn’t available before.

At Knowledge Bank we already had a remote-working policy in place that enabled us, before lockdown, to recruit the best people from around the country without the need for them to travel to the office. So, while other companies were having to adapt when lockdown was imposed, this situation was normal for us. We did it to give our team a work/life balance and to enable us to recruit without geographical limits.

I think, where brokers are concerned, this will be slightly different because more of their clients will feel they want to see their adviser face to face due to the nature of the subject.

Overall, having a positive mindset and technology at your fingertips means that face-to-face meetings aren’t essential for many things.

However, I will be really happy to see people in the flesh again, socially, when events and awards return.