Former broker on how his adviser experience enhances his lender role
Much is often said about the broker and lender relationship within the mortgage industry – both working closely together, though not always easily, their respective businesses are intertwined and rely heavily on each other.
Stuart Heavens (pictured) has a fascinating perspective on both aspects of the mortgage process, having worked for Nationwide Building Society, before qualifying and working as a broker for several years, and now as a business development manager for the lender, Family Building Society.
Heavens believes that his perspective enables him to better understand the challenges facing brokers.
“I find it massively useful and I think in part it's because I can understand more where brokers are coming from,” he told Mortgage Introducer. “I understand that brokers want explanations for things. Brokers can take a ‘no’, they understand that not all lenders will lend on all things, but often they want to know why.
“I'm an inquisitive person. If a case is declined, I want to know why it's been declined so that I can explain it better to brokers. So having been in that situation, it also gives me the empathy of knowing that actually, as difficult as a conversation may be between a BDM and a broker, the broker then has to have that same conversation with the client.”
He continued: “The broker has involvement because they want to get paid for it, obviously, but the client is the end borrower and the client is much more emotionally involved and invested in the application than the broker is. I understand first-hand how the broker feels when they've then got to go and have those difficult conversations.”
Read more: What do mortgage clients want from brokers?
How the mini-budget challenged the broker-lender relationship
A particularly testing time for the relationship between brokers and lenders was the chaotic period of the Liz Truss tenure in 10 Downing Street. Heavens views it, in his words, as a ‘one-off’.
“If a lender has to pull rates at short notice, sometimes that’s unavoidable, sometimes it is avoidable and the lender could have done better,” he commented. “The mini-budget was special circumstances, let’s say. As a direct result of the mini-budget, our products had to go without notice because they were loss-making within the space of an afternoon. However, in the months that followed that, we didn’t repeat that same treatment of the brokers, if you will. We made sure because then we were back to a relatively new normal. While things were going up and down, we could afford to give them 24 hours’ notice.”
He added: “A good relationship with your BDM is key. There's no such thing as an easy case anymore. Clients are becoming more diverse. One of the things I find really rewarding about this job is when a broker calls me about a case they're really struggling with and I help a fellow professional out of what they think is a dead end.”
When he left school at 16, Heavens would love to have become a professional football player. But, realising that his soccer skills weren’t quite up to it, he set on becoming a sports physio instead, with hopes of working within his favourite sport. He took a job at Nationwide as a stop gap, and stayed almost eight years, working his way up from customer service to intermediary sales support.
He took a detour in his career, to work as a mortgage consultant, before returning to lending at Leeds Building Society, and then latterly at Family Building Society, from 2022. Having worked as a mortgage adviser, he holds the role in a higher regard.
“There was definitely an increased level of respect,” he said. “I guess my understanding of the role fundamentally changed, when originally I'd thought that people would seek out advisers to get that advice, and then realised actually how hard brokers have to work to find business. It’s harder than you think, the challenges involved with trying to win the business in the first place. I think that was something I massively underestimated before I got into it. It really opened my eyes.”
Would Heavens ever return to mortgage broking?
“I would,” he said. “At the moment I've got two young children. I'd want to go self-employed, but I'd want to do it at a stage of my life where my kids have grown up and I've got savings behind me. I’ve got some different experience, some more diverse experience, so, I'd certainly do it again, and I think I'd be better at it next time round.”
