As long as I can remember, commentators have predicted the demise of smaller building societies but our success in recent years shows that, with the right plan and commitment to the intermediary sector, it is possible to not only survive but thrive in today’s market.

We may not as of the moment have online algorithms that underwrite borrower applications in seconds. But we do have people who take the time, on the phone or in person, to understand a borrower’s circumstances and what the broker believes makes them a good prospect.

Good proposition

As a building society, we are working hard to extend our suite of products and criteria variations and bring in new ranges but our willingness to listen and use our common sense means we can provide the right products at the right time for the right reasons. Together with our ability to flex criteria when we can see a responsible and valid reason for doing so, we really do have a proposition worth shouting about.

Understanding your proposition and where it fits is crucial for all lenders but for smaller players it is critical if we are to remain relevant to our brokers and take advantage of lending opportunities as they come.

I have worked in banks, centralised lenders, regulated and unregulated businesses but I cannot remember a more competitive time. We have never had so many lenders chasing this volume of business. Understanding your strengths and being able to articulate them in this market is essential.

Last year several lenders pulled out of new lending altogether citing the increasing competitive pressure on pricing as their reason, something that all lenders in the market know about only too well.

While it benefits those borrowers who fall into the low loan-to-value bracket, with full-time employed incomes and clean credit, this competition on price has not fed through to the same extent when you go further up the LTV curve and bring in complicating factors such as historical credit blips or self-employment.

People are rarely vanilla and it’s wrong to disadvantage them because of it. Yet, this is happening today: the move to trying to automate mortgage advice is not creating a market that works better and more efficiently for everyone. It’s speeding up the delivery of a mortgage approval for those borrowers who would have had little trouble securing an approval in any environment. Technology is largely being embraced to cut costs and protect margins – it’s not about understanding the fringes.

Real people with real finances

While some lenders try to be all things to all people and others focus very specifically on one type of borrower, at Newcastle, we have chosen to specialise in helping the people we know from old. Real people with real finances. That might mean they run their own business locally, it might mean they want to get on the housing ladder later in life having rented and saved for many years. It could mean that they need a helping hand from the government’s Help to Buy scheme, or that they’re buying in a new development where homes are still being built. It could mean they’re newly self-employed and have just set up on their own. As I say – real people with real finances.

We support borrowers from all these walks of life because we take our role as a building society that contributes back to our members seriously. But we can only do this with broker partners.

It’s thanks to our brokers that we can understand what their customers want and need from us: it’s not the cheapest rate available or the size of any cashback or free legal fees. It’s that healthy dose of practicality when it comes to finding a loan that suits them and their financial circumstances.

Team of BDMs

Our team of business development managers (BDMs) is growing to cover the entire UK and they are always ready to meet brokers to see how we can help with more complex cases; and explain the detail of some of our criteria that is specifically designed to help with less vanilla lending.

Our team of BDMs is punching well above its weight, not only on delivering brokers a clearer understanding of what sort of lending we’ll consider but also considering the growing volume of lending that we do.

As society evolves so must building societies as the push to automate will inevitably create borrowers in a state of limbo. People’s financial affairs are increasingly complex but we are here to support them and the brokers that serve them. I believe building societies have a real opportunity to make a difference.