Stand and deliver

We were at the last exhibition of the season last week, or what delegates may call a good excuse to stock up the stationery cupboard. Satchell and I were heading up the stand this year with some exciting product changes across the Group to discuss and looking around the other exhibitor stands it was very apparent to see the variance of what exhibitors are offering to attract brokers to their stands.

Some lenders have raided the marketing cupboard to pull out the left overs of stock for the last show of the year. Some are using gimmicks to ‘Win an iPad!’, confectionary or even bottles of alcohol. On one stand they even had a bucking bronco – I refrained from having a go – honest! Then there's the good old fashion stands with business cards and their key product offerings. Gone are the days of the pole dancing and absinthe cocktail stands with promotional playboy bunny-girls and this leads me to my next question. What really does attract brokers to business exhibition stands? Is it the gimmicks on offer or the offer of enhancing the delegate’s product offering and income streams?

As businesses, our attendance at these events does guarantee one thing and that is you’ll have opportunities to discuss actual applications with business writers. Underwriting applications in the specialist marketplace is certainly one area where gimmicks and distractions cannot be entertained. There is a real skill to being able to identify quickly the merits of an application by the looking at the client's credit history, affordability and property all contribute to whether an application is one which your company can fund quickly and ensure a good return on the investment.

At Lancashire Mortgage Corporation we pride ourselves on experience and understanding an application from enquiry through to funding. With commercial lending it is a bespoke arena of underwriting, no two applications are the same and there is certainly no substitute for experience. In the current marketplace with the high street commercial lenders looking to minimise their exposure on commercial property, this certainly provides great opportunities for the secondary lenders. Having a computer score and underwriting a commercial application is certainly difficult to say the least, especially when the client doesn't have 3 years audited accounts with increasing profit turnover and revenue or a perfect credit rating.

Reviewing an enquiry and looking at the property, the location, the client credit history and their affordability is an art and sadly one which is dying as the 'computer says NO' generation of underwriting continues to grow within the high street lenders. With every non high street client there is always a scenario to go with the application and it is this understanding and experience which continues to allow those clients who have been declined by the high street to continue to grow their business or portfolio.

With nearly 40 years of experience manually underwriting commercial and short term finance applications this gives our company an edge over our competitors. It is a process which we have established over the years and one which can be very difficult to replicate thereby giving the Group a distinct advantage.

I've been doing these exhibitions for many years and long may they continue, other than the pain of standing up all day, you do get to converse with your customer and many new product ideas and concepts have been born in Olympia and Earls Court over the years and I look forward to discussing them all again next year.