As I look forward to a break over the festive season and reflect on 2023, it’s hard not to think of the many challenges we’ve faced. Brokers, lenders, and customers have all felt the effects as the cost of living crisis really took hold. It’s been a year that could be defined by frequent rate changes which have increased the workload required on every case and challenged affordability for many. That said, I’m immensely proud of the steps we’ve taken at Pepper this year to support our intermediaries through these challenging times and I’m thankful to all of you who’ve continued to give us your overwhelming support.
We’ve always prided ourselves on being easy to work with and we see this as our ongoing commitment to you. To that end, we’ve made even more improvements this year to our processes, products, and criteria to ensure we’re perfectly placed to help you and your customers when you need a more personable and specialist lender.
We know how important clear and timely communication is, especially in the rising rate environment we’ve lived in for most of the year. This is why we always committed to 48hrs’ notice for any product withdrawals, we launched our Webchat service to offer an alternative to busy brokers who wanted to run new business enquiries past us, and we placed our underwriters into regional pods, meaning further consistency and a chance for you to build relationships with the underwriters who process your applications as well as your BDM.
We’ve received fantastic feedback on these changes and our great communication and speedy turnaround times are the main subjects being celebrated by the brokers who’ve left us rave reviews on our Trustpilot.
With affordability being the biggest challenge for many this year, we’ve made a range of improvements to support with this.
We’ve maintained our commitment to first-time buyers by expanding our Affordable Homeownership range, becoming the only specialist lender to launch a First Homes range. This is in addition to our Shared Ownership, Right to Buy, and Help to Buy ranges, which will continue to be a growing focus for this underserved group of customers.
But we didn’t stop there. We also made several other enhancements to boost affordability for customers, including extending our maximum term to 40 years and accepting more variable income, including 100% of monthly bonus/commission and overtime.
Furthermore, the latter part of the year saw us relaunch our improved free legals service for remortgages, with a clear commitment to continuing the 5* service you receive from us pre-offer, into the post-offer journey. What’s more, is at a time when more people are looking to consolidate debts, we include an unlimited amount of debt consolidation within the service and pay any applicable fees on the customer’s behalf for the solicitor clearing those debts.
2023 may have been a challenging year, but it’s also been a chance for specialist lenders to step up to the challenge and be ready to help you with the opportunities that lie ahead. I look forward to working closely with you again in 2024. In the meantime, may I take this opportunity to wish you and your families a relaxing festive period.
Paul Adams,
Sales Director
at Pepper Money