The initiative led to 49 changes at the bridging and development finance lender to help make improvements, such as the standardisation of processes.
As an example, it has completely changed the legal process.
In an exclusive interview with Bridging & Commercial, Scott Marshall, managing director at Roma Finance (pictured above), claimed that some lenders might get a different level of service based on which lawyer they instructed.
“…We wanted to turn that round the other way,” said Scott.
“So, we dictate to the lawyers what they should do and when they should do it.”
He claimed that Roma’s lawyers now only asked eight questions on the vast majority of its transactions.
Scott mentioned that a “huge” amount of work had gone on in the background to enable that to happen.
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All of the lender’s lawyers have got the same set of questions and instructions and are therefore all working on the same basis.
“…We give our lawyers feedback, so if you are the slowest, you’re not going to get a lot of business.
“If you are the quickest, you're going to get more business.”
“So, when I'm sitting in front of a broker … and they say: ‘Oh, the legal process is a real big problem for us…’; [we say], ‘here are the questions’.”
He added that this was like a “lightbulb moment” for the broker.
Roma has also held stakeholder days for its lawyers so they can talk about what has and hasn’t gone well.
“…We know who's the quickest and who's the slowest, and so do they," Scott said.
Despite this, he explained the importance of having different lawyers on its panel which were better at different things.
"…You would never put all your eggs in one basket.
"That wouldn't make sense either."
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