Redundancies continue across industry

These follow the redundancies made by Genesis and The Mortgage Operation (TMO) earlier this month.

Mortgage brokerage The Black & White Mortgage Company confirmed it has made eight out of its 60 staff in its processing department redundant.

Chris Ollerenshaw, chairman of Black & White, said the firm was going through a period of restructuring. Although the firm admitted that ‘business had been tough’ post-‘Mortgage Day’, it said it was now experiencing a pick up in business volumes.

Ollerenshaw said: “We are re-structuring in order to make our mortgage department more efficient. We are trying to get applications to offer down to 15 working days and applications to completion down to 27 working days.

This means undertaking some streamlining. But we have recruited a new mortgage manager.”

He added that the company had no future plans to make more redundancies.

Manchester-based packager Mortgage Choice said it has made two staff redundant in its processing department. The firm employs a total of 25 staff and has 15 employees working in its processing division.

Doug Hall, sales director at Mortgage Choice, said the redundancies were due to its online strategic development and was not a result of cost-cutting due to mortgage regulation.

He commented: “Mortgage Choice is in the process of a two-stage strategy developing the services on offer to our customers. Part of the first stage has seen the launch of our new interactive website offering online decision-in-principles along with an interactive section for our strategic partners. As a result of the development of our online technology Mortgage Choice has made two staff redundant.”

He added: “The second stage will see the development of our back-office system and at present we are currently in the process of short listing a number of packaging software providers.”