What Is a Business Development Manager?

Mortgages. Chances are that most people will need one at some point in their life. As mortgage brokers, our passion is to help our clients to get the best deal possible so that they can either buy their dream property, invest in a buy-to-let or remortgage their current home to get more financially secure. Part of our day-to-day operations is to liaise with lenders and work together to get a mortgage offer in place as smoothly and as quickly as we can. We wouldn’t be able to do this without the help of the lender’s business development managers (BDMs).

I think that it is probably fair to assume that most of our clients don’t realise that lenders have business development managers or how integral they are to their mortgage applications. So, what is a BDM? What do BDMs do? How do BDMs work with mortgage advisors? In this article we are going to get an insight into the world of BDMs and hear from two lender BDMs who have been kind enough to share some of their thoughts with Oportfolio.

What Is A Business Development Manager?

A BDM is someone who works for a mortgage lender whose main job is to develop business relationships between the mortgage lender and mortgage brokerages in their specific regions. The BDM wants mortgage advisors to be aware of the benefits of recommending their lender to clients and, subsequently increasing the business coming to the lender.

What Does A Business Development Manager Do?

As part of their job, they are normally assigned a region or regions of the country to cover and will spend most of their day traveling to brokerages in their area to meet the advisors and administration teams there. At these meetings they will take time to get to know the brokerage as a whole and get an idea of the type of business that they are. They will then learn how best they can nurture the relationship they have with the brokerage and what support they can offer in their role.

Aside from travelling to different areas of the country, their most important role is to act as an intermediary between the lender and the brokerage and to help out with mortgage applications and criteria whenever possible. BDMs are there to help with discrepancies in applications, application rejections or other issues, finding and offering lending solutions if an application goes wrong and sharing tips and criteria quirks that can enable an application to be approved.

How Have BDMs Helped Oportfolio?

In our opinion, the help and support of BDMs is invaluable. To us, BDMs and the relationship we have with BDMs is one of the most important parts of the mortgage application process and has helped us to get mortgage offers for our clients many times. For example, we have a lot of clients who are self-employed. When people apply for self-employed mortgages, there can be some pushback from mortgage lenders due to the way that income and tax is calculated by accountants. Sometimes a lender will want to see the net profit of a self-employed individual (i.e. income after tax) or sometimes they will want to see the salary and dividends as proof of income.

Because of this, sometimes the income required for the mortgage application might not be showing enough in their tax documents. In some instances, we have been able to speak with a lender’s business development manager and explain the situation to them. In some cases the BDM is able to either speak with the mortgage underwriter directly to see if they are able to accept things like accountants projections or consider retained business profit as proof of income instead in order for the mortgage affordability to work.

Another example is very relevant of late. We are increasingly seeing more and more lenders restricting their lending capacity due to the rising cost of living. Some lenders will automatically apply inflated outgoings such as water, gas, electric bills as a way of covering potential cost of living increases. However, sometimes these inflated figures seriously affect mortgage affordability.

In cases where we think that the figures are severely over inflated, we are able to speak with our BDMs who will then lobby our argument with the mortgage underwriters and help us to overturn their decision. Of course, this is not something that can be done in every circumstance, but BDMs are definitely able to help.

From The BDMs Mouth

We have spoken to two mortgage lender BDMs to get their opinions of their jobs and their roles in the mortgage brokerage business. These BDMS are Naomi Joseph from Principality Building Society, a residential home and buy-to-let lender and Alan Green from Birmingham Midshires, a buy-to-let only lender.

We have spoken to two mortgage lender BDMs to get their opinions of their jobs and their roles in the mortgage brokerage business. These BDMS are Naomi Joseph from Principality Building Society, a residential home and buy-to-let lender and Alan Green from Birmingham Midshires, a buy-to-let only lender.

• What is your name?

“Naomi Joseph”

• What lender do you work for?

“Principality Building Society”

• How long have you worked with your current employer?

“I have worked for Principality Building Society since October 2021.”

• How long have you worked in mortgages/property finance?

“I have worked in various job roles in the mortgage market since 2003. Before this role I was a mortgage advisor in the new build mortgage market. Working for one of the largest new build brokerages in the country.”

• In your opinion, what makes the role of a BDM so important to brokers?

“I believe the BDM role is very important as having contact with brokers helps them keep up to date with the changes in lending policies and products available. We can build strong relationships with brokers that help with placing cases that may not seem straight forward initially.”

• What do you enjoy most about your job?

“I love being a BDM and meeting other people. Getting the chance to chat with brokers and getting to know them and their business needs is very rewarding. Being able to help brokers place cases which they are struggling to place is a great feeling.”

• Why is your lender such an important lender to IFA’s?

“Principality Building Society are important within the marketplace as we offer a common-sense approach to lending, all of our cases go through an underwriter so it is not just a system who is deciding if a case can proceed or not. Where some lenders might say yes or not based on their strict criteria, we can say ‘potentially’ and we will take a more in-depth look at the case as a whole before we make a decision.”

• Where do you see the mortgage market moving in the next 12 months?

“It has been widely published the Bank of England will continue rising by a few % points by the end of the year, this may slow down the mortgage market, however with housing stock still being an issue I don’t believe it will slow down too much. With remortgage renewals coming through we expect this will be keeping brokers busy over the coming months as the market levels out into a new normal.”

• What is your lender’s stance on rising inflation and rising interest rates?

“A big concern for customers is the rise in inflation and the impact on the cost of living. We want to be able to work with our customers to support this.  We need to have the flexibility to adapt to the ever-changing needs of our customers and broker partners to help during these economic challenges. As a lender we are committed to helping borrowers by offering enhanced LTI (loan to income) at 5x for NHS staff and 5.5 x LTI for Newly Qualified Professionals for all applicants on the mortgage with no limits to LTV (loan to value).

We are aware that some people may have small issues with credit in the past, we will allow defaults/CCJ’s up to £500 registered within the last 6 years, due to not credit scoring by LTV this can be helpful for placing cases for higher LTV customers. We don’t limit LTV for foreign nationals so long as they have lived in the UK for 3 years and have at least 2 years remaining on their visa at the time of application.

You maybe noticing an increase of customers who are Day Rate contractors or Fixed Term contracts and struggling to place these with some lenders, we are committed to help with type of applicants so it may be worth checking our lending criteria to see if we are able to help.”

• As a BDM/representative for a lender, what do you want more brokers to know about what you do and what your role is?

“I think I just want more brokers to know that we are here to help and by using our help we can make a real difference to your customer’s mortgage application journey. We can also boost your business! If you have a client whose application isn’t black and white, speak to your BDM first.”

• What is your name?

“Alan Green”

• What lender do you work for?

“BM Solutions (Birmingham Midshires) which is part of Lloyds Banking Group”

• How long have you worked with your current employer?

“I have been with BM Solutions for 23 years now”

• How long have you worked in mortgages/property finance?

“Before working for BM I was a mortgage advisor for 6 years so a grand total of 29 years in total!”

• In your opinion, what makes the role of a BDM so important to brokers?

“I think that being a familiar face/voice that a broker can trust and build a working partnership over time is very important. Nothing in mortgages is black and white, so it’s always important to chat through cases with us to see where it fits criteria and if it doesn’t fit. I like to be able to point the broker in the direction of a lender that it will fit.”

• What do you enjoy most about your job?

“My favourite part of being a BDM is meeting brokers. Working together and not just discussing BM criteria, but also talking about the ever-evolving changes to the private rental sector.”

• Why is your lender such an important lender to IFA’s?

“BM solutions is and has always been a purely intermediary lender, all clients must go through Intermediaries (mortgage brokers) even for product transfers where we continue to pay a full proc fee. Even in the credit crunch BM were one of only 2 lenders still lending in the BTL sector.”

• Where do you see the mortgage market moving in the next 12 months?

“I believe the mortgage market will continue to thrive in the next 12 months. There is an incredible amount of fixed rate deals coming to an end in next year and an incredible amount of innovation being planned and delivered by lenders such as incentives for green mortgages. It’s going to be a challenging year for many, but an exciting one for the mortgage market.”

• As a BDM/representative for a lender, what do you want more brokers to know about what you do and what your role is?

“I just want to encourage brokers to contact myself or my fellow BDMs via our new BDM support line prior to submitting applications with any queries regarding criteria and keying. We have just introduced a new BDM line managed by experienced BDM’s so the days of getting a voicemail and leaving a message are now gone.”

We hope that this article has given you more of an insight into the valuable work that lender BDMs do and the integral role that they have within the mortgage process. As brokers, we are extremely grateful for the help and guidance that all of our regional BDMs give us. If you want to know more about mortgages or how Oportfolio works with BDMs to get our clients mortgages through, please feel free to give our helpful team a call.