“Specialist lenders play a vital role, providing bespoke products to meet specific customer needs, but there’s perhaps less focus on maintaining the customer relationship post-completion. Where High Street lenders can cross-sell different products and build brand loyalty, specialist lenders need to work a bit harder to foster a meaningful relationship. The reality is that retention strategy starts as soon as you have that first interaction with the customer, and every minute it goes beyond that.

Customers’ expectations of service are changing, fuelled by their experiences with service providers in other industries. Customers now expect to interact with their mortgage providers in the same seamless way they do with Netflix or Spotify.

We believe technology and AI have an important role to play in understanding and meeting customers’ needs. We don’t see them replacing the human touch, which is so important in the specialist market, but rather as an enabler of great customer service.”