The judges’ choice

The first part of our awards process recognises the Best Product Providers which are chosen based on analysis carried out by financial research company Defaqto. You can find out more about this at the end of the feature.

The other part recognises the achievements of organisations and individuals. We invited businesses to submit entries to a variety of categories and our independent panel of judges deliberated the merits of each entry.

This year we received a record number of entries and this made the already tricky job the judges had in picking a winner even more challenging.

On this year’s judging panel were….

Paul Broadhead, head of mortgage policy at the Building Societies Association

Lynda Blackwell, consultant and former mortgage manager at the FCA

Dominic Scott, managing director of Alexander Hall

Amyn Fazal, retired former chief executive of Penrith Building Society

Kate Saines, digital editor, Mortgage Finance Gazette

Mortgage Product Innovation

Winner: Buckinghamshire Building Society

Buckinghamshire Building Society’s high loan-to-value (LTV) Family Assist mortgage has created a buzz in the industry at a time when options for first-time buyers are limited.

Indeed, the Covid-19 effect has seen many high LTV products pulled from the market but Buckinghamshire’s offering, which allows parents or grandparents to help their children onto the property ladder, remained a stalwart.

Family members can use the equity in their property to allow their child to borrow up to 100% of the purchase price. It’s a product which is described by the society as ‘a simple solution which enables borrowers to access over 80% LTV lending’. Since launching it has seen £1.2 million in applications.

Our judges described it as ‘exactly what the purchase market needs’ and said the product offered a way to overcome the tricky obstacle many first-time buyers faced of raising a deposit.

Highly Commended: The Melton Building Society

Awarded for its innovation in the credit repair mortgage sector, The Melton is continually looking for ways to help customers who might normally be overlooked in their bid to become homeowners.

Later Life Lending Innovation

Winner: Chorley Building Society

It might be a small regional building society, but Chorley has proved it can also be pretty nimble – something which its later life lending offerings demonstrate neatly.

Chorley recognises its customers have individual needs when it comes to retirement finances and, for this reason, a flexible approach is required.

Based on this principle, Chorley has refreshed its later-life lending products to provide customers with a range of mortgages which best reflect their needs. It has categorised mortgage products into products for those under 70 and those over this age. It also launched an additional LTV band to recognise some members may have large amounts of equity in their properties.

Judges were impressed with the fact the society’s approach recognised the nuances of each customer but also thought these products were likely to experience greater demand as the recession bites.

Highly Commended: Pure Retirement

Over the last year Pure Retirement has enhanced its Heritage range product criteria and expanded distribution of its Classic range. It showed an aptitude for rapid innovation when the pandemic hit when it swiftly put measures in place to ensure customers could continue to access the products during social restrictions.

Best Self Build Lender

Winner: The Tipton & Coseley Building Society

“For us, self-build isn’t just another mortgage,” The Tipton told us in its submission – and it went on to clearly demonstrate this in a number of areas.

The Tipton offers an end-to-end service in collaboration with Buildstore for customers looking to buy their dream home. There is a single point of contact for customers throughout which makes it easy to do business with and means help is only a phone call away.

The flexibility to allow customers to borrow more during the construction period and advance stage payments options also stood out for the judges. As did the assistance with fees and innovative products, particularly one which offered no Early Repayment Charge (ERC).

Highly Commended: Darlington Building Society

Darlington offers a variety of flexible options in recognition of the fact there’s no such thing as a straightforward mortgage application in the world of self-build projects. The society’s quick and flexible response to Covid meant customers benefited from payment deferrals and follow-on products for delayed builds.

Highly Commended: The Melton Building Society

The Melton constantly enhances its self-build proposition to ensure it is available to a wider range of customers and to ensure it supports new government housing targets.  Highlights of its proposition include a Family Assist Self Build Mortgage and an Eco Mortgage, which provides a discounted rate to recognise investment in energy efficiency.

Innovation – Non Lenders

Winner: Terrafirma

A conveyancing search report which assessed risk to property and land from coastal hazard has, until recently, been non-existent.

This year Terrafirma’s geologists, engineers and scientists have applied advanced modelling, undertaken extensive research and used in-house expertise to provide a property-specific assessment and expert interpretation of the risk of coastal hazards to create just such an assessment for conveyancers.

Judges hailed the report as ‘unique’ and ‘increasingly necessary’ and said it covered a ‘glaring’ omission in the property risk space.

Terrafirma is a fledgling company and its CEO Tom Backhouse admitted that to be recognised for the impact it had made on the industry through this award would be ‘humbling’.

Highly Commended: Countrywide Surveying Services and Santander

Countrywide’s HomeFact home condition report is described by the firm as being ‘unique in the market’. It offers buyers with an insight into the condition of their property and highlights areas which need attention. It also takes in security risks, maintenance guidance, schools, crime rates and broadband availability. Santander offers the report free to first-time buyer customers.

Highly Commended: CrowdProperty

Property project online lending platform, CrowdProperty, offers a solution for both property professionals attempting to access finance and investors seeking decent rates of interest. It delivers what it describes as ‘game-changing speed, ease and certainty of funding for quality property projects.

Innovation Award – Technology Providers

Winner: Phoebus Software Limited

Phoebus’s digital self-service platform allows borrowers to carry out tasks to their mortgage account without contacting their lender.

Developed before Covid-19 broke out to undertake a variety of tasks from making payments and viewing balances to changing details and switching products, Phoebus self-service (PSS) adapted as the effects of the pandemic began to filter through to mortgage borrowing.

Indeed, Phoebus added functions to reflect the changing demands in areas such as forbearance, arrears and payment holidays.

This helped reduce volumes to call centres at a time when lenders were under severe pressure and inundated with queries. Judges said this made it a true ‘game changer’ and a product which stood out from the crowd.

Highly Commended: Mutual Vision

A tech business which is wholly owned by its customer community of building societies and banks, Mutual Vision uses its ‘mutual’ ethos to enable those organisations to invest in digitisation. It offers a digital platform which supports financial institutions to innovate quickly and compete with larger outfits.

Highly Commended: Target Group

Target achieved the accolade for its collaboration with design agency Bio – dubbed Target B – to deliver The Mortgage Hub, a customer-centric, digital first platform designed to speed up the process and offer more visibility.

Innovation – Lenders

Winner: Accord

The Accord Growth Hub is an online library offering free blogs, podcasts and tools to help brokers grow their business. It was a well-used resource before the pandemic, but when the first lockdown was announced and brokers were thrown into disarray it really came into its own.

The team at Accord created a special ‘Covid-19 hub’ landing page to host specific content which was relevant to the new climate and offered advice to support brokers manage business throughout the pandemic. Content was adapted to include information on working digitally, using social media and supporting clients’ wellbeing amongst other topics

The agility and speed with which Accord responded to the crisis meant the resource was not only helpful to brokers but highly relevant and the judges felt it had proved invaluable to large parts of the broker community.

Highly Commended: Skipton

Skipton launched a series of webinars during the lockdown with the aim of keeping brokers engaged, working together and supported during the pandemic. The brainchild of BDM, Rachael Hunnisett, these online events proved highly popular and there have been over 550 webinar attendees to date.

Best Use of Technology – Non Lenders

Winner: Connells Group & Twenty7Tec

Connells Group and Twenty7Tec collaborated on a project to create a seamless journey for the adviser which incorporated an automated sourcing and lender application tool on Connell’s mortgage services point of sale (POS) system.

It aimed to streamline the user’s experience by cutting down rekeying to improve productivity and growth for the estate agency.

The two organisations had to overcome a variety of challenges to create Hub but the result was a POS system which allows Connell’s mortgage consultants to source, submit DIPs and full applications and track cases. It has made the process more efficient and effective.

Judges described it as ‘synergy at its best on a big scale’ and thought it had made a clear difference to users.

Highly Commended: Paymentshield

Paymentshield provides insurance technology and home protection services through financial advisers and mortgage brokers. Over the last year it has adopted an advisory-led and digital direction and created the successful Adviser Hub platform which organises customers’ data under a personalised dashboard. It has led to a 25% increase in quotes and 20% rise in completions.

Highly Commended: Primis

Primis picked the award for its in-house customer relationship management solution, Toolbox, which is a digital back office product for brokers. It has undergone a number of enhancements in the last 12 months including two factor authentication and electronic identification. It now also benefits from a customer portal which has improved customer service and communication for brokers and their clients.

Best Use of Technology – Technology Providers

Winner: Mortgage Broker Tools

Mortgage Broker Tools launched the MBT Affordability technology platform in 2019 to provide a place where brokers could calculate lender eligibility and how much they would lend based on each customer’s affordability and criteria.

Calculations are accessed through one intuitive form in under a minute and results are accurate every time.

It has proved invaluable in sourcing lenders which might otherwise have been overlooked – something our judges were particularly enthusiastic about because it overcomes the FCA concern that some brokers only consider a shortlist of lenders.

As well as being a great time saver, the platform keeps a record of all cases and affordability results making it a hit when it comes to compliance and regulation. Judges thought it was a ‘much-needed’ platform which offered a useful solution to tight affordability rules in real time.

Highly Commended: EDM Group

EDM has developed RiskHub which is a digital tool providing a swift, secure and positive method of proving income and affordability.

It automates income verification alongside several other credit risk decisions and allows brokers or customers to upload documents or take photos using a mobile phone. It is currently working with a number of lenders who are considering adopting the solution.

Highly Commended: Phoebus Software Limited

Phoebus Software Limited (PSL) has created a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) which enable seamless data transfer between suppliers in the so-called ‘eco-system’ of solutions which customers use during their mortgage journey.

These have allowed lenders and borrowers to benefit from the latest cutting edge technology whilst utilising more than one supplier’s technology. The evolutions of the APIs in the last year have taken this technology to a new level.

Best Use of Technology – Lenders

Winner: Vida Homeloans

Vida revealed it had been making the most of its time out of the market during the summer to develop an innovation hub, V-Lab, to design and test new product and service propositions.

The main products to emerge from this were the lender’s new intermediary website, which includes a one page user interface, and also a chatbot called MILO (My Intelligent Lending Operative) who is described a digital concierge who will help intermediaries.

The new website has under gone cutting-edge user testing to ensure it is right for brokers. Meanwhile, MILO has brought technology to life through a character which tells its story to intermediaries about data-driven lending and its commitment to change the mortgage process for good.

Vida also signed a strategic partnership with Zoot to build a new end-to-end mortgage platform which forms a significant part of the firm’s £5 million investment in technology.

Highly Commended: Masthaven

Following hot on the heels of the launch of its dedicated website for intermediaries in 2019, Masthaven created its Broker Portal for short-term lending. The aim is to enable brokers to get quick quotes in seconds, DIPs in minutes, apply online and have full case visibility. Since its launch there have been 400 new registrations and it has helped demystify short-term lending for new brokers.

Highly Commended: Pure Retirement

Pure Retirement developed new technology which has driven one of its key successes this year – the updating and enhancement of its KFI portal. It allows advisers to create KFIs 65% faster than the previous version and streamlines the process for advisers with just a single login required throughout the whole process.

Customer Service and Treating Customers Fairly – Lenders

Winner: Accord Mortgages

When the lockdown began, Accord sprang into action to find ways to support its brokers with challenges which began presenting themselves. Virtual meetings, webchat facilities and social media feeds successfully replaced the traditional face-to-face meetings and phone calls – all received positive feedback.

Brokers were able to self-serve thanks to the publication of daily turnaround times on the website and a dedicated Covid-19 hub was launched and regulatory information updated to keep intermediaries in the loop.

Once physical valuations were once again up and running, Accord offered a broad range of products including new build, buy-to-let and Help to Buy offerings up to 80% LTV. The strong communication with brokers throughout this testing time was noted by the judges who praised Accord for being proactive but also making sure intermediaries had all the tools to make their businesses thrive.

Highly Commended: Cumberland Building Society

Brighter Banking was the brand new proposition launched by Cumberland Building Society in January which aimed to make the organisation stand out by providing exceptional customer service.

Its ethos that happy staff equals happy customers meant it invested in developing its team through a unique management training programme. It has boosted its IT infrastructure but has also kept branches open in rural areas. It also offered specialist hospitality mortgages to support the sector badly hit by the pandemic.

Highly Commended: Greenfield Mortgages

Bridging loan provider, Greenfield Mortgages, said it has put a great deal of care and diligence into its work to ensure its customer journey is seamless. Despite challenges this year which meant it was forced to reduce lending criteria, it worked hard to ensure this returned to pre-Covid levels. Its experienced underwriting team ensure rapid, same-day decisions are made on all cases.

Customer Service / Treating Customers Fairly – Non Lenders

Winner: Countrywide Surveying Services

One of the testimonials in Countrywide’s submission read: “An unforeseen consequence of these extraordinary times is a realisation that the mortgage industry needs valuers…. More than that, it needs valuation companies that are innovative and able to adapt to the challenges of the locked world.”

Countrywide proved itself well in this respect. Moving quickly to adapt its business model and develop continuity plans it simultaneously kept in mind the importance of its employees’ and clients’ health and wellbeing.

As well as instigating work from home options and deploying a ‘virtual’ Covid-19 incidence response team it also set up daily conference calls, just after the daily Number 10 government briefings, to react to developments.

It moved to a desktop valuation model and adapted this quickly to client demands. It kept in touch with customers to ensure it had the capacity to support them when lockdown ended.

Judges were also particularly impressed Countrywide kept the pipeline moving during such a testing time for this sector.

Highly Commended: Ascent Performance Group Ltd

Ascent went the extra mile to ensure customers received the highest level of service and were treated fairly during the Covid crisis. It redeployed 107 colleagues during the lockdown to help clients with telephone demand and it has also put work into eradicating the stigma attached to mental health issues.

Highly Commended: Paymentshield

Paymentshield has been acutely aware of just how significant the upheaval throughout 2020 has been for its customers. As such, it affirmed two main duties of care – to ensure financial and mental wellbeing of clients and to provide them with immediate and ongoing support. This was demonstrated in a number of areas, not least its investment in vulnerable customer training.

Community Services

Winner: Newcastle Building Society

Newcastle Building Society has always had a huge focus on community services – but this became more pertinent than ever during the coronavirus outbreak and lockdown.

At the start of the crisis the society moved rapidly into action to provide a £100,000 donation which helped launch the North East region’s Coronavirus Response and Recovery Fund. This sum grew to over £1 million and has since supported more than 150 groups working with the elderly, disabled and homeless during the pandemic.

It delivered £200,000 in community grants and £35,000 in Covid-focussed funding and it invested £1.1 million into the Newcastle United Foundation to support the football club’s state-of-the-art sports and education and wellbeing hub.

And this is before we start delving into the myriad smaller focused funding activities which have taken place to support businesses and charities in 2020. One judge described its community support as ‘second to none’.

Highly Commended: Chorley Building Society

With many charities in Chorley’s community missing out on valuable donations and fundraising opportunities because of the pandemic, the society decided to take action.

As well as donating money to the NHS it also helped boost the funds of two local hospices and the North West Air Ambulance, amongst other charities. Some of this money was used to fund PPE at St Catherine’s Hospice while another donation supported the provision of clinical, practical and emotional support to children at the Derian House Hospice.

Highly Commended: Cumberland Building Society

The Cumberland community has a particular reliance on tourism and hospitality – an area impacted with devastating consequences by the lockdown. Cumberland Building Society responded to pleas of help – dealing with each enquiry personally – to put in place mortgage holidays, overdrafts and extensions of support.

This and the society’s ‘100 Thank Yous’ campaign to highlight the everyday heroes in its community and boost morale at a difficult time helped Cumberland scoop this Highly Commended award.

Corporate Social Responsibility – Non Lenders

Winner: Phoebus Software Limited

Phoebus Software Limited (PSL) has always invested heavily in charity and taken environmental responsibilities very seriously having been a carbon neutral company for over ten years.

PSL took this to another level this year pulling together existing charity, environmental and social initiatives. It amended its overall business strategy of having a positive impact on the lives of others enabled through business processes, engagement with local community, employees, clients and suppliers as well as through charity work.

As well as enhancing employee wellbeing, engagement and training PSL helped local charities and the wider community through fundraising donations and volunteering. It supported STEM learning activity in schools and universities across the Midlands whilst also maintaining carbon neutral status, and further reducing its impact on the environment.

Corporate Social Responsibility – Lenders

Winner: Principality Building Society

As a result of the coronavirus crisis, Principality Building Society changed the way it delivered its CSR strategy to become more digital and virtual yet it has maintained it maintained support levels and positive impact made.

Among the initiatives for which the society stood out was Welsh Homes Matter – which helped 1,704 first-time buyers across Wales with a completion value of over £182 million and supported the development of 499 new and affordable homes in 2019, working collaboratively with Housing Associations.

It also started two new charity partnerships with Alzheimer’s Society Cymru and Teenage Cancer Trust to which it donated £260,000. It carried out ‘virtual’ fundraising while staff worked from home but still managed to bring colleagues and families together through these events.

Principality has also invested in financial education in Wales, helping over 11,000 pupils in 2019 and a further 10,000 in the first half of 2020.

The society also launched a bilingual children’s app in August in response to the Covid crisis. Dylan’s Den, as it was named, includes maths challenges for little learners.

Best Debt and Arrears Management Strategy

Winner: Masthaven

Masthaven adapted with agility to the Covid-19 outbreak by embracing technology to support its customers who needed payment holidays.

As a result, it has managed to not only directly support mortgage customers but look after them at a hugely challenging and difficult time.

Indeed, as people fell ill or had to care for family or friends, were furloughed, made redundant or had to close their businesses, many became worried about making their mortgage payments, paying their staff, facing a drop in self-employed earnings, even paying their everyday bills.

Masthaven knew it needed to fully support these people – whether they were customers, clients or staff. It put into place a number of remote measures including the online mortgage payment holiday request form with the help of its technology partner Dock9. It kept up strong lines of communication during this time and also maintained a near perfect Feefo score of 4.9.

Best Anti-Fraud Service

Winner: SmartSearch

In the face of the coronavirus outbreak, SmartSearch has enabled its clients to continue to verify customer identity, with no need for physical ID documents. The digital platform means that all the necessary checks and screening can be carried out remotely.

This has been vital in helping client firms maintain business continuity in spite of lockdowns and social-distancing requirements.

Individual AML checks take just a few seconds and business checks around two minutes to process from start to finish.  The platform provides ongoing monitoring as standard so that clients are immediately notified of any change in a customer’s status.

The SmartSearch platform is constantly being developed and improved in response to regulatory changes and customer feedback.

Most recently SmartSearch introduced its unique new ‘TripleCheck’ feature, combining three highly sophisticated verification methods to set a new standard in AML security.

Best Law Firm

Winner: Ascent Performance Group Limited

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, Ascent delivered a strong financial performance whilst also going ‘the extra mile’ to ensure customers received the highest level of service and were treated fairly at a time when this was critical.

Indeed, some of our judges noted the law firm managed to produce decent revenue – increasing from £9.7 million in 2018/19 to £10.7 million in 2019/20 with further growth expected this year. Ascent said this was a testament to the quality mortgage related customer service offered by its businesses.

Customer engagement was a major focus for the law firm, which has refreshed its website to include a case study section to illustrate just how it can help people in a variety of situations from unemployment and sickness to bereavement and relationship breakdown.

Highly Commended: Aberdein Considine

A breakthrough year for Aberdein Considine, 2020 saw the law firm win a place on the recoveries panel for the UK’s biggest mortgage lender. This meant it now acts for each of the ‘big four’ lenders – a milestone for the firm.

Highly Commended: TLT

TLT has helped shape the industry through its work with industry bodies and policy makers. This includes its response to Covid-19 and the climate emergency and its investment in supporting clients from a variety of mortgage lenders to react to the changing legal, regulatory and economic landscape.

Best Conveyancing Firm

Winner: O’Neill Patient

2020 might have been a challenging year, but the turbulent environment has not prevented O’Neill Patient from significantly expanding its presence in the mortgage market.

It attributes its success to excellent service and cutting-edge technology, with the latter drastically reducing the time it takes to complete paperwork in the conveyancing process.

In fact, the firm has made it its mission to speed up the conveyancing service while keeping the introducers and consumers updated in real time. This was something which did not go unnoticed by the judges, who were also impressed with how the technology had driven simplification and efficiencies.

Highly Commended: The Moving Hub

The Moving Hub is a new conveyancing and surveying platform designed to help introducers such as mortgage brokers, financial advisers and estate agents connect to one of the largest panel of vetted conveyancers in England and Wales.

It vets each solicitor individually and offers 24/7 support. Plus it is committed to working with technology innovators to improve the customer journey and provide seamless integration to use single data entry to speed up the process and improve customer service.

Best Surveying Firm

Winner: Countrywide Surveying Services

This submission was praised by the judges for offering the widest range of tools to deliver efficiency and improve standards in surveying.

Countrywide’s response to the pandemic was swift and its move to desktop valuations helped thousands of homeowners and home movers secure a mortgage offer.

Now with more lockdowns in place the hurdles continue, but Countrywide said it had been able to meet these difficulties with honest, open conversations with clients and customers as well as ensuring the safety of its surveyors were maintained at all times.

On top of this it has received ISO Accreditation and delivered 20 more surveyors to the industry through its training academy. This builds on the 200 plus it has introduced over the last six years.

Highly Commended: Arnold & Baldwin

Describing itself as ‘honest and approachable’ experts, Arnold & Baldwin impressed judges with its dynamism and thought leadership. It secured a number of commercial successes and new contracts in 2020 and proved that it could punch above its weight in terms of reputation and influence.

Highly Commended: e.surv

This year e.surv made a ‘strategic commitment’ to technology as an enabler of business efficiency. It believes it was this long-term view which enabled it to withstand the turmoil faced during 2020.

e.surv was able to specify and mobilise a bespoke remote valuation solution during the lockdown and kept lender clients well updated with its developments.

Best Loan Servicer

Winner: Pepper UK

Pepper caught the attention of the judges for building a full working from home solution following the lockdown announcement in just two weeks.

It made decisions early on to react quickly to the rapidly-changing situation and not only put in place the technology for staff to work easily from home but implemented a fully functioning payment holiday solution.

Using agile methodology it refined payment holiday processes as it went along, quickly auctioning regulatory changes to provide a seamless service.

It also kept clients updated with insights about how Covid-19 and associated regulatory changes might impact their portfolios. Meanwhile, Pepper also managed to successfully complete four securitisation programmes.

Highly Commended: Hampton Mortgage Servicing Limited

2020 has been a ‘huge’ year for the development of Hampton Mortgage Servicing, a specialist provider of loan servicing to the real estate finance industry.

Having already serviced the loan book of a significant Shared Equity Mortgages (SEM) investor, it strengthened its market positioning by adding a number of new clients who wanted to use HMS to service their loans, these included Redrow Homes. It also launched its new loan administration platform ‘HMS Exposure+’.

Individual Achievement

Winner: Maria Harris, sole director of Digital Cat Consultancy

Harris spent the first half of the year taking Atom Bank’s mortgage proposition to the next level with £2 billion of comps and its first securitisation before moving on to take her first bank non-executive role at United Trust.

She launched the Digital Cat consultancy and became a participant in the Home Buying and Selling Group working with government and industry to redesign the buying and selling process.

Moving from a high profile company to an individual business meant a complete change of approach but Harris was determined to maintain her support to the industry around mortgage transformation, navigating the emerging technology landscape.

On top of this Harris remained resolutely committed to driving the equality and women in finance agenda which she’s delighted to have achieved.

Indeed, as a passionate advocate of women in finance and equality Harris helped move the gender balance at United Trust Bank from 0:8 to 2:10.

“It’s a small step,” she said, “but with so few women on UK bank boards, it feels like an important one and a good way for me to role model what women in our industry can achieve and aspire to.”

She has continually coached and mentored individual women in leadership teams across the industry raising their confidence, building their internal and external profile, and helping them to be heard within their organisations.

In each firm, this has had a significant impact on raising awareness of the diversity imbalance issues and in promoting the progress made through having a more inclusive business.

In the new consultancy role Harris worked with the likes of Twenty7Tec, Coreco, Eligible and Brightstar amongst others, guiding them on their digital strategy and providing practical support in delivering their customer experience improvements and technology enhancements.

Harris added: “The industry is at a real crossroads in terms of technology adoption and it’s become increasingly difficult for firms to navigate the myriad options that are available on the market and to understand how they could impact their business today and in the future.

“Part of my role entails talking to CEOs and their teams about what’s happening across the industry, which technology solutions are genuinely adding value today and where emerging technologies such as distributed ledger are likely to impact the mortgage industry in the future.

“I regularly do this type of update session free of charge, either attending the board or exec meetings of firms or having one-to-one sessions with a CEO.”

Leadership Award

Paul Carter: CEO of Pure Retirement

Paul Carter successfully led the company from the front during an unprecedented world event, and also managed to ensure it continued trading effectively as a business and remained true to its values and culture of putting its people at the centre of everything it did.

His priority was to retain a market-leading reputation within the industry whilst also running a company where existing employees felt proud to work.

Despite growing as an organisation, Carter remained focussed on keeping staff both informed and engaged. His quarterly update sessions offered staff a full insight into the company’s activities and where it stood against its targets. It also provided them with a greater comprehension of how their contribution aided the achievement of those goals.

As well as increasing these updates during the pandemic, Carter continued to personally conduct employee induction presentations via Zoom to ensure new starters felt at home. He also organised training for both senior leadership and team managers focused on managing through change.

Appreciating that everyone has different views of the current landscape, Carter created a culture in which no-one has been forced to do anything that they felt uncomfortable doing. He also worked hard to minimise the disruption to the business from the pandemic.

Carter created a business that holds its staff in (at least) equal standing with its wider business goals, and which understands the benefits of having an engaged team. By leading the front, and by example, Paul has underlined this culture during these strange few months, and it’s been a key factor in it weathering the worst of the pandemic.

Best Product Providers

This part of our awards recognised the Best Product Providers which were selected based on analysis by financial research company Defaqto.

Its study takes into account various lending criteria such as interest rates and fees on a range of loan-to-value (LTV) bands. It scrutinises fixed, variable and discounted mortgages from lenders over five time frames between September 2019 and September 2020.

Researchers at Defaqto award points based on products’ competitive rankings and these are added up for each provider across each mortgage type to identify the overall positioning.

This final ‘ranking’ also takes into account the consistency of competitive offerings over the space of a year.

As such, our Product Provider Awards have proved to be consistent in offering good, competitively priced mortgage products during the entire year.

Here are the winners and highly commended:

Best National Building Society

Winner: Nationwide

Highly Commended: Coventry Building Society

Highly Commended: Skipton Building Society

Best Regional Building Society

Winner: West Bromwich Building Society

Highly Commended: Cumberland

Highly Commended: Principality Building Society

Best Local Building Society

Winner: The Melton Building Society

Highly Commended: Hanley Economic Building Society

Highly Commended: Loughborough

Best National Bank

Winner: HSBC

Highly Commended: Barclays

Highly Commended: Halifax

Best Intermediary Lender

Winner: Barclays

Highly Commended: Halifax

Highly Commended: Nationwide Building Society

Best Online Lender

Winner: HSBC

Highly Commended: Nationwide Building Society

Highly Commended: Post Office Money

Best Buy-to-Let Lender

Winner: Virgin Money

Highly Commended: Accord Mortgages

Highly Commended: The Mortgage Works

Best Lifetime Mortgage Lender

Winner: Legal & General Home Finance

Highly Commended: Just

Highly Commended: more 2 life

Best Overall Lender

Winner: HSBC

Highly Commended: Barclays

Highly Commended: Halifax

You can see all the reaction to the awards on Twitter using #MFGAwards2021