“In the mortgage industry, we can carry disproportionately heavy mental health burdens, as customers are in an emotionally charged position.”
Watch the recording of this Lunch and Learn session here.
Chahal: “The beginning of the third week of January is known as ‘Blue Monday’ because it is apparently the most depressing day of the year. Days are short, we have all returned to our routines and many people are dealing with or processing developments in their personal lives [that] may have come to a head over the holidays. So, it felt like an appropriate time at the first Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association (IMLA) equity, diversity, and inclusion (ED&I) group meeting of 2025, to discuss the mental health of people in our industry, and how we can work together to maintain and improve our psychological wellbeing.
“We invited Jason Berry, sales director at Crystal Specialist Finance and one of the key founders of the Mortgage Industry Mental Health Charter (MIMHC) to talk about the charter, its activities and its aims.”
Berry: “I have been working in mortgages for more than 30 years and one standout thing that has become apparent to me is how resilient we are as an industry. We handle whatever is thrown at us, be that new regulation, a volatile economic environment or a global pandemic. However, as individuals, we are as vulnerable to declining mental health as any other humans.
“And we humans are not in a great place. Technological developments have made our lives a lot easier in some ways, but at the same time, they have made the pace of life a lot faster. We are always ‘on’. Anxiety and depression are on the rise, and sadly suicide is the biggest killer among men aged between 35 and 49 and women between 20 and 34. Loneliness is another big issue, which of course was exacerbated by the lockdowns, and subsequently has become a side effect of working from home for many people.
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“In the mortgage industry, we can carry disproportionately heavy mental health burdens, as our customers are often in an emotionally charged position when we deal with them. Death, divorce, financial difficulty and moving house are known to be the most stressful life experiences, and our customers are often going through a combination of these stressors. Little wonder we can experience some transference of this stress.
“Coming out of Covid, in 2022, I reflected on this and resolved to try and take some sort of action to make sure mental health and wellness are placed firmly on the radar in our industry. I knew this would never work as a one-man crusade and was delighted to call on a number of industry colleagues who had been vocal on the subject in the past. Pretty quickly, I got together with Paul Brett, then of Landbay, Nicola Firth of Knowledge Bank, Scott Howlett of Chartwell, Rob Jupp of Brightstar, Andrew Montlake of Coreco and Martin Reynolds of SimplyBiz, and between us we created the MIMHC.
“MIMHC is just that – a charter. It is not a boys’ club or a paid-for network, it is a free-to-join charter. All we ask is that signatories to the charter commit to keeping the mental health of their colleagues on their agenda. As such, signatories can decide how involved they want to get with our activities. They all receive our annual MIMHC survey, the results of which we try to circulate as widely as possible, and which we believe is a valuable bellwether for the mental health of the industry.
“Some of the results have been concerning. For example, last year’s results revealed that more of us than ever were not only working longer hours, with 62% working more than 45 hours a week, but more of us are failing to sufficiently sleep. The 2024 survey also found that a fifth of us struggle with mental health issues. Meanwhile, the number of respondents who said their firm currently participates in mental health and wellbeing initiatives or strategies actually fell from 56% in 2023 to 52% in 2024. It’s very disappointing that these metrics are heading in the wrong direction, which only serves to emphasise the need for more companies to sign up to MIMHC and improve their focus on mental health.
“We currently have 175 signatories to the charter, touching around 20,000 people, and I am chuffed and humbled by the positive reaction within our industry. But we would like to double that number this year. Currently, we have more lender signatories than broker firms, so I am keen to have more conversations with more adviser firms and convince them of the logic of signing up to the charter.
“We are currently very much in phase one of our development. We are still raising awareness, getting more signatories on board and directing people to our website, with its helpful information on mental health and wellbeing and signposting to other useful resources. We have also arranged a number of events, including last year’s five-day ‘Walk and Talk’ event, from Crystal’s offices in Tamworth to Canary Wharf. We will be walking and talking again from 11 to 15 May this year, this time along the 144-mile route from Digbeth to Paddington, along the Great Union Canal. Signatories are welcome to join in and benefit from the therapy that a good conversation can provide. We are also planning a charity ball later in the year. We will be calling on volunteers from among our signatories to help us get the events off the ground, and to collaborate with us in our second phase, which will focus on delivering meaningful support to signatories to better look after their colleagues’ mental health and wellbeing.
“Our sector is still not looking after its people as well as it should be. Working from home and hybrid arrangements often make that job even more difficult, as it can be harder to identify when someone is suffering if they are based remotely. We need to work together to come up with ideas to improve our communication and care for our colleagues, perhaps take lessons from other parts of our businesses, share these strategies and best practices and commit to implementing them, to make the mortgage industry a kinder and more supportive place. Ours is a people business, and we must make it our business to look after our people.”
Click here to sign up for the MIMHC, or simply browse the website.
