Aldermore Bank has added various capabilities to its residential mortgages Business Development Manager (BDM) structure to improve the experience provided to brokers.

The developments mean brokers will now have access to a BDM team to handle cases. Should a BDM be unavailable, brokers will be able to get a response from another member of the same team.

The bank is also increasing the number of telephone BDMs by 60% and cutting its ten sales regions down to three.

The new model is focused on three main areas across the UK – the North (Scotland, Northern England and Yorkshire, and North Wales), Central (The Midlands, South Wales, and East Anglia), and the South (London, South West and South East).

The move is intended to expand and improve the services BDMs provide to brokers. Each region will have a team of ‘telephony BDMs’ available to them.

Almost a year into the Covid pandemic, Masthaven Bank director of intermediaries Rob Barnard pointed out that that the mortgage industry needed to “strike a careful balance” between adopting digitisation and remote practices in the BDM space and maintaining an element of face-to-face contact to keep the market thriving.