Mint Property Finance

Managing the cost to business as inflation soars




It’s fair to say that when the pandemic broke in 2020, few of us imagined that businesses would face even greater challenges in 2022.

With the cost of living having hit record highs and being predicted to further escalate, if there’s one thing that we can be certain of, it’s that things are going to get harder before they get better.

Cutting non-essential costs is a natural response, and one all businesses will look to make. For those who can, it is also time for a strategic investment. 

There’s an unhealthy obsession in business to measure success by growth; to think that if you’ve made £1m one year, you need to be making two the next, and so on.  There is no given right in business to make a profit every year, and if you have, you should be ready to reinvest it, building platforms for scalable growth, greater resilience, and stronger pricing and cost capabilities.

It's a strategy we at Mint Property Finance have introduced — investing in our eight ‘P’s: our people, premises, partners, promotion, platforms, processes, products and performance.  It’s part of our long-term commercial vision and ambition to grow our loan book to £250m by 2023.  

Our people are central to that vision and our business, and employee retention is a strategy all firms should engage in. We’ve awarded pay rises that exceed the rising costs of living, maintained our company-wide bonus scheme, invested in every individual’s personal development and hosted a ‘Power of One’ company away day, uniting the team in our shared business goals.

Just last month, we also announced plans to move into new premises, providing our team with an enhanced working environment. This may seem like an unnecessary expense in the current climate, but we’re focused on the long-term future, not the short-term.  Businesses shouldn’t underestimate the importance of the office environment in maintaining employee satisfaction, with the pandemic having only served to give greater importance to this as employees return to work. 

We’re investing in our partners too — including our investors, without whom we would not be able to grow, and our professional introducers, implementing bespoke financial incentives that work for every individual and every scenario. It’s part of our commitment to delivering a best-in-class experience — quite simply, we’re taking care of those that take care of us.

Our platforms and processes are an area in which we continually invest in order to support our team and, ultimately, improve the sales journey from initial enquiry through to completion. In a financial crisis, it is more important than ever before to understand your customer’s journey and enhance this at every stage.

Monitoring our performance is something we do at every stage of business, utilising the latest in technological software and engaging in personal, one-to-one conversation. There’s a saying that ‘knowledge is power’ and never more so than in the current business climate. It’s what enables us to stay ahead of the competition, not only in terms of our service standards, but also our products, in which we constantly invest to meet the demands of our professional introducers and remain at the forefront of the market.

As we navigate the sector during this challenging period, this approach and the strategic partnerships with other businesses are allowing us to support and learn from one another. It’s what has helped our growth over the past 12 months, and what enables us to continually offer enhanced commissions to all professional introducers.

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