Alison Pallett, sales director of Nottingham Building Society (The Nottingham), spoke to Mortgage Solutions to reflect on her 42-year career in financial services ahead of her retirement in March, when her role will be assumed by Matt Kingston.
Growing up in a small village in North West Leicestershire, Pallett started working at age 18 at the local mutual, Leicester Building Society, as a branch cashier.
Pallett joined the sector “completely by accident”, knowing she did not want to go to university.
“We used to have a local paper [that] had a jobs column on a Thursday night. I was scanning the jobs column and saw this role at the local building society. I rang up, got an interview and landed the job,” she said.
She spent seven years at the Leicester Building Society, which later became Alliance and Leicester, then Santander, with Pallett saying she “loved” the roles she took on, including being a mortgage clerk who typed up mortgage offers.
Here, Pallett discovered she enjoyed helping people get a mortgage, but realised her progression was limited due to the mutual’s structure at the time.
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Pallett broke away from mortgages and spent time working for personal loan lenders. She then returned to mortgages as a financial adviser at the Bristol & West, which became the Bank of Ireland. This is where she learned the value of working for a good company.
Pallett said: “When I went to work with the two different types of companies, that’s what made me realise I wanted to get back into the world of mortgages and building societies, and that’s how I came back to work for the Bristol & West and ended up doing 25 years there.”
A natural talent
Pallett said engaging with people came naturally to her and she realised early on that she found the profession relatively easy.
She added: “I had a boss once tell me: ‘You only think it’s easy because you’re good at it. Not everyone is good at talking to customers or brokers’.
“It made me think a bit more positively about myself.”
With this, Pallett encourages her nieces and nephews to find a job they enjoy doing and can benefit from.
“Trust me, you do not want a life of 42 years of working misery, because it’s just not worth it,” she added.
Knowing when to bow out
Pallett said now was the right time to leave the profession as she had met the objective of her role at The Nottingham.
“I was brought in for a specific reason and one of the key objectives I was given was to professionalise the sales team.
“We were a top 10 building society with a £4bn balance sheet, but we only had a really tiny sales team. The sales strategy was a little bit confused about who we were trying to work with and what partners we wanted.
“This is what I’ve been working on with some great people for the last two-and-a-half years. Now it feels as if there’s a natural break in that operating rhythm,” she said.
Pallett put a succession plan in place when she joined The Nottingham and identified the people with potential. Pallett learned to do this from previous experiences when she sometimes found she would not get a promotion because there was no one to take on her responsibilities.
She said there had been a “smooth transition” at The Nottingham since Matt Kingston was appointed to succeed her as sales director; so much so that, with another three months left in the role, Pallett feels “a bit worried I might be in the way”.
She added: “He’s already flying and doing such a great job.”
The Nottingham has had a “fabulous year”, Pallett said, having rebranded, launched into the foreign national market, and partnered with MQube.
“We have accomplished so many things, it feels like a good time for me to leave that in capable hands,” she added.
This is a mentality Pallett has adopted throughout her career, saying there was just as much dignity in knowing when to walk away as there was in knowing when to “stay on and battle”.
Wide-spanning knowledge
Having worked across different segments of the market, including three-and-a-half years at LiveMore, Pallett said there were challenges in every organisation, so it was key to quickly find solutions.
She said the financial crash in 2007 and 2008 had “one of the biggest impacts” on her, “because at that point, everybody who survived [the crash] needed to have one or two different jobs.
“It’s one of the things that have given me a real breadth of understanding across multiple disciplines. I’ve worked in sales, mortgage operations, partnership development, programme delivery,” Pallett said.
She added that this had given her a holistic mindset and enabled her to think about what was best for a business overall, not just her department.
“Of course, it’s good to be an expert, but it’s equally as valuable to be a bit of a lesser expert but have a wider breadth of knowledge and information, because as you rise up through the structure in organisations, your deep technical knowledge becomes less of a requirement, but your broader managerial skills are much more important,” Pallett said.
Speaking of her move from a sales role into an underwriting position, Pallett was told she would hate the job. Instead, she found it allowed her to “see what it’s like on the other side of the fence” and level up.
Pallett said: “When I left the Bank of Ireland after 25 years, it was a tough thing to do, but there is life outside of whatever job you’re doing. If you see something that sparks an interest, then have a go; you don’t know where things will take you.
“That’s how my career has been. Don’t just focus on the here and now; think about what it is you’re looking for long term.”
Working with ‘brilliant women’
Pallett said she had worked alongside “some really brilliant women” over her career and was proud of her ability to encourage them to ask for higher pay, take opportunities and increase their viability.
She said: “One of the things people often ask me is if there’s anything in my career I regret and I always say I wish I had been braver sooner. Instead of sitting there thinking, ‘I could do that job’ and waiting for someone to give me the chance to do it, I should have made a bit more of a fuss.
“If you sit in a job waiting to be asked if you’d like to be promoted, I can tell you, you’re going to be waiting a long time. When I worked at the Bank of Ireland, I had a boss who I asked for a pay rise quite regularly. I wasn’t successful 100% of the time, but I was successful more than 50% of the time.”
Referring to times Pallett had done a good job and felt she deserved a reward, she added: “You are going to be waiting a long time if you think someone’s going to take notice.”
Pallett continued: “That’s one of the things women need to get better at. But I’ve helped coach and mentor some brilliant women, such as Christie Cook, who worked for me when we [Bank of Ireland] were looking after the Post Office [mortgage accounts]. She’s now running the retail division of Hodge.
“I think that’s my legacy, that I’ve helped people who thought they couldn’t progress to higher-level roles.”
The Nottingham’s female CEO, Sue Hayes, drew Pallett to the organisation and she said she was glad to see a “real substantial shift” in the progress of women in financial services.
She said: “I used to laugh and joke that the only place there was never a queue for the ladies’ toilets was at a financial services event, because that’s the only time that there’s not many of us. Now I go to events and there is a queue, which has got to be a positive thing.”
Pallett also acknowledged that while she faced challenges as a woman, more work was needed to address additional barriers for women of colour. “We’ve made a lot of progress, but it’s not a done job,” she added.
When asked how her career affected her personal life, Pallett said she made many friends and now has two groups of girlfriends through work.
“I’ve built a fantastic group of friends through financial services, male and female,” she added.
Her career opened her eyes to other people’s experiences, which she described as a transferable life skill, and gave her the confidence to put herself forward for other vocations, such as becoming the trustee of a local women’s charity.
She said: “It’s helped me broaden my horizons… lots of friends, lots of fun, a few tears along the way, but generally speaking it’s had a very, very positive impact on me.”
Once she retires, Pallett will take on the role of deputy chair of The Financial Services Forum, taking over from Stephen Smith.
She said she was “equally proud and terrified” of becoming deputy chair, saying there was a difference when working with peers across the sector.
Separately, Pallett is considering other options such as non-executive director roles, adding: “I’ve worked full-time since I was 18. I definitely feel as if I’m going to need to do a little bit of something.”
