Growing the business, not the overhead
How did one of the main UK mortgage providers increase its
business by 50% with no additional resources?
Stewart Wright, Managing Director of Bank of Ireland Mortgages
(BIM), had big plans for the UK mortgage division of the Bank of
Ireland group. The company, which serves the UK mortgage broker
community, needed to provide 'best-in-class' service levels to its
brokers, in order to provide them with a competitive advantage.
Wright needed a pragmatic partner to deliver long-term
sustainable improvements; he chose VISION.
New approach
VISION carried out extensive interviews with employees and
brokers to:
- determine the opportunities for improving business performance
and processes
- establish where the barriers to growth existed within the
organisation
New processes and procedures were designed, piloted and
implemented. Existing IT systems were enhanced to realign the
technology to the new processes and therefore maximise efficiency.
For example, data input and mortgage assessment processes were
redesigned to enable potential borrowers to obtain an underwritten
decision, in principle, within three hours.
Confidence and responsibility
VISION knew BIM needed to improve the skills and capacity of its
people to speed up the development of new offers to prospective
customers and build new channels.
To improve the capacity and skill sets of the employees,
especially in the critical area of underwriting, formal 'coaching'
practices were developed and introduced. Their purpose was twofold
- to build skills and competencies and manage the morale and
confidence of staff that worked with the new system and
processes.
Employees now feel confident to take on increasing levels of
responsibility and work together to drive business process
improvements across the company.
Emotional commitment
Wright comments: 'With style and energy, the whole VISION team
fitted into the company. I believe that it has added measurably to
the success of the project that everyone from VISION has shown real
emotional commitment to BIM's business success and not just this
project.'
This enabled the organisation to sustain changes in the company
and to encourage the sharing of best operational practices.
More effective processes and the greater alignment of technology
improved service levels dramatically, satisfied customer demands
and improved conversion rates of business; for example, the
Approved In Principle conversion rates improved from 25% to
50%.
Rated and recommended
VISION'S work with BIM helped ensure that it retained a five
star rating for service in the UK Financial Adviser awards in
November 2000. The IFAA/Financial Adviser survey 2000 ranked BIM
fourth in the UK lending market for quality of service.
Client satisfaction
"With VISION, we achieved clearly measureable improvements in
the motivation and capacity of people across the business."
Stewart Wright, Managing Director BIM
Mortgages
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