This week, Mortgage Solutions is speaking to Jack Dougan, business development manager (BDM) at Vernon Building Society.
Which locations and how many advisers and broker firms do you cover in your role at Vernon Building Society?
I cover the whole of England and Wales with support from the intermediary team in the office. My day-to-day interactions are predominantly with our key broker partnerships located across the country.
What personal talent/skill is most valuable in doing your job?
It might be a cliché, but relationship-building and management. As a BDM, it is vital you’re able to develop and maintain positive relationships with key partners and introducers. It’s especially important at the Vernon, where a large proportion of our lending is done through key partners in different areas of the market. There needs to be trust developed that my view on cases mirrors that of the society and that we’re working together to get the best outcome for the client.
What personal talent/skill would you most like to improve on?
I could probably do with brushing up on my IT skills, as having to lean on the skills of others probably makes me a bit less efficient than I should be when collating and analysing data.
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What’s the hardest part of your job?
Having to balance risk exposure levels, liquidity restrictions and service capacity occasionally clashes with my natural instinct to try to lend as much as possible as quickly as possible. But it’s part and parcel of working for a smaller building society and provides the experience I’d be unlikely to get within a larger lender.
What do you love most about your job?
The variety that it brings. Working with brokers and getting to personally know them, their businesses and their clients’ needs keeps me on my toes. You never know what challenges and complexities the next case will bring.
What’s the best bit of career-related advice you’ve ever been given? Who gave it to you?
My boss at a previous company said to “always park your car facing the exit”, which is both practical and metaphorical advice. While first impressions are the most important, so too are lasting ones. Or to put it another way, don’t spoil a successful appointment or meeting by reversing into someone’s gate on the way out.
How do you keep up to date with developments in the market?
Through a combination of written press, online bulletins, LinkedIn, industry magazines and discussions with other BDMs, brokers and individuals within financial services. Setting time aside at the beginning or end of the day, when it’s quieter in terms of the phone going and emails pinging through, to take stock of the market and catch up with any news and developments works for me.
Tell us about your trickiest case – what happened and how did you resolve the problem(s)?
Here at the Vernon, we look to lend on a common-sense basis, which naturally brings with it cases with complexities, as they don’t fit neatly into the criteria of the larger lenders. The trickiest are usually when we need to lean on a third party to back up our lending decision as, understandably, they can be more rigid. For example, a recent case involved us remortgaging a recently finished self-build property built with a modern method of construction and a non-typical income source. We were able to get comfortable with the income side of things internally and, after discussion with our valuers, we were able to obtain a valuation figure for mortgage purposes to complete the transaction.
What was your motivation for choosing this career?
The lack of talent needed to become a professional golfer.
If you could do any other job in the property sector, what would it be and why?
Self-build is a really exciting area of the market that I’m interested in. I believe it can and should be a significant part of the strategy to combat the UK’s housing shortage. It would be interesting and gratifying to get myself into a role that could help influence government policy and make this happen.
What did you want to be growing up?
My initial dream was to be a professional sportsperson, like many young boys. And after that, there was no specific ‘dream job’. I’ve always sought roles that require a high level of interaction with people and it’s made working life enjoyable.
If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
Teleportation to avoid traffic. I know virtual meetings are always a possibility and are fantastic for being able to reach a greater number of people or complete a higher volume of meetings, but I still prefer face to face.
What is your strategy for tackling challenges?
I always try to take a step back and reassess. I never lose the ability to look through a positive lens.
What is your greatest skill(s), either work- or non-work-related?
The ability to think creatively when finding a way to make a casework. Having the freedom to look at cases on their merit and build a rationale rather than being confined with strict criteria fits perfectly with my skill set.
And finally, what’s the strangest question you’ve ever been asked?
“Can I use my dogs as a deposit?” What the client meant was: “Can I use the proceeds from selling a litter of puppies?” How it was phrased, though, took me by surprise.
