If you get knocked down… get back up, to achieve mortgage success

Broker thought he was jinxed, but his tenacity saw him through…

If you get knocked down… get back up, to achieve mortgage success

Today, mortgage broker Graham Lock (pictured) runs a thriving business, though in the early part of his working life he felt thwarted time and again as events both global and closer to home seemed to be conspiring against him.

But the challenges which Lock overcame in the journey to setting up his own firm, Lock and Key Mortgages, based in Hampshire, showed him how to navigate adversity and put him in a stronger position to give advice and achieve broker success.

Lock’s career in finance started out selling life insurance. When his employer launched a pilot to train its staff as mortgage brokers, he jumped at the chance and studied hard, only for the company to pull the project. Undaunted, he continued pursuing his mortgage aspirations and went to work with Santander – and was made redundant a year later. Picking himself up again, Lock took up a financial consultant role within an estate agency business, just as the global financial crash of 2007-08 hit…

Did Lock think fate was trying to tell him something?

“In the early days of my career I was feeling a bit jinxed,” he told Mortgage Introducer.  “In terms of the challenges, I thought, ‘well, OK, you have just got to deal with it. Where do you want to be and how do you get there? Though it didn’t feel like it at the time, it set me up with the skills of coping with adversity, when people come to me panicked and seeking advice over interest rates rising.”

Lock’s tenacious spirit and pragmatic approach to overcoming life’s hurdles has clearly served him well. Following a decade-long stint as a mortgage and protection adviser for Choice Mortgage Solutions and Choice Financial Solutions, he set up his own business at the end of 2023.

“I’d never really considered setting up my own company because I was always happy and content, he reflected. “I thought, ‘it's great - don’t rock the boat.’ But then I thought, ‘well, actually, why can't I set up my own business?’ I possibly would have started my AR business earlier, and I could have accelerated my progression over the years quicker, but the experience to get me to where I am has been brilliant, so I can't knock it.”

Being his own boss is rewarding, Lock acknowledges, because it really does enable him to determine his own approach.

He said, “You have to be open to changing, constantly evolving, probably pushing yourself outside of your boundaries a little, looking at how can you change your process or how can you make it easier, and keeping it relevant to what is actually useful to a customer, rather than what you think is useful.”

Read more: Brokers, how much do you value your mortgage administrators?

What, then, in Lock’s experience is the mark of a good broker?

“It is about having the ability to realise what's important for the customer and how you can actually help facilitate it,” he noted. “As a broker you have got to try to put yourself in the customer's shoes as well - to try to visualise their goals and really listen to what they want to do and where they are at in their lives. Deliver on what you say you're going to do, do it quickly and do it effectively. This will give the customer confidence in you and keep them coming back - and repeat customers are really where brokers can make some good wins.”