Describe your career up to becoming chief executive at Target Group.    

I joined Target in 2022 as chief operating officer, following nearly seven years with Capita. During that time, I served as senior manager for UK retail banking and mortgage services, change director and finally, managing director of Capita’s mortgage software business. Before that, I spent more than 10 years with Lloyds Banking Group in a variety of posts. 

What is your role at the company?  

My role is to ensure we have the right strategy, operations and people in place to support our clients and staff. Key to all of this is making sure we provide a broad range of capabilities to cater for existing clients and attract new ones. 

At the same time, we must also retain excellent talent. 

One of the real strengths of Target is that we are part of the wider Tech Mahindra family [an IT firm, owned by the Indian finance-to-agriculture conglomerate Mahindra], meaning we can leverage their tech capabilities to support our customers and our growth plans. 

What part does the company play in the UK mortgage market?    

Target has had a strong presence in this market and wider financial services for more than four decades. While some may know us from our legacy software offering, or perhaps, just in-life servicing, our proposition is broader than that. 

We now have Mortgage Hub, our originations platform [launched in October 2023], which was designed using behavioural science as well as an ongoing consultation with lenders, brokers, conveyancers and customers.  

It’s part of a broader focus to support the digital transformation of lenders and other major financial institutions.  

This can be through software solutions, managed services or business process outsourcing. Through our fintech platform, we manage assets of more than £17bn, allowing clients to administer loans and investments.   

There is a lot of talk about ‘paperless’ mortgages. When will we see them?  

The prospect of paperless mortgages has long been a hot topic. Wet signatures have in many cases been replaced with electronic ones, while requesting physical documents has been replaced by PDFs over email at a minimum. Lenders support these efforts, but it is still far from widespread and often focused on just certain parts of the process, rather than a fully paperless approach.  

There’s no doubt there are further steps the sector can take, whether it is increasing adoption of Open Banking, integrating AI into underwriting processes, or the great work at the Open Property Data Association, led by chair Maria Harris. 

I’m very optimistic that a fully paperless mortgage can be a reality. 

What one thing would you change about the mortgage market?    

I’d like to see greater application programming interface integration, leading to a unified, real-time data-sharing platform across all stakeholders.  

Currently, mortgage lenders, servicers, and third-party providers are often siloed, leading to inefficiencies, delays, and errors in the process.  

A more connected ecosystem could eliminate redundant steps and deliver a smoother experience for lenders and borrowers. 

This shift would allow servicers to leverage data-driven insights and deliver a more personalised customer service. 

What has been the biggest test in your career?   

Moving from chief operating officer to chief executive has, and is, a big challenge – as ultimately you are the leader of a company accountable for 700-plus staff, 26 clients and thousands of customers. 

I have been doing this role for a couple of years and I am constantly learning and adapting, whether that’s new situations, or the changing needs of the business and our plans. 

I have learnt to ensure that I continue to focus on building the best possible team and giving them an environment which allows them to succeed.  

I also always have a clear plan in place but am ready to make micro changes when needed. 

How will the mortgage market have changed in five years?    

I think it is only inevitable that in the search for greater efficiencies, we will see increasing adoption of AI, with many lenders building their own models.  

We will undoubtedly see increasing applications in the mortgage market – particularly when it comes to decision-making, fraud detection and customer support.  

AI will make mortgage approvals faster and more accurate, and minimise manual errors. 

As it scales, we’ll hopefully see robust protocols to match to avoid any incorrect inputs or outputs, or biased outcomes. 

Also, we will be five years further down the road in the process of digitalising property data, to make this easily available between lenders, conveyancers and other parties. 

With this in place, digital mortgages can become the norm, using blockchain technology to provide a more secure, transparent and efficient way to manage property transactions.