“It’s Mint Time”: Irene Thomas sets out growth plans as new MD of Mint Property Finance

It’s safe to say that Irene Thomas is enjoying the first few weeks of her new role as Managing Director of Mint Property Finance. “I feel alive,” she told Bridging Loan Directory. “I am six weeks in, but it feels like it’s been six years already. But in a really good way.

In fact, she says that she no longer follows Greenwich Mean Time in the office. “That’s been replaced by Mint Time!” she said. “You look at the clock saying 5pm and wonder how that happened because you’ve been so busy! I just keep smiling.”

Thomas said she already knew that Mint was a “phenomenal business with a great brand,” but she is keen to work out what it can do differently “to go from good to great in the next 12 months and beyond.”

Thomas is a financial industry veteran clocking up 39 years with major names including the Bank of Scotland, Together and more recently Assetz Capital, where she served four years as Chief Operating Officer.

That ‘extensive senior level experience’ was one of the reasons she was selected by Mint’s founder and former MD Andrew Lazare as his replacement. Lazare is now chief executive of the company he launched back in 2011.

Thomas’s career path has crossed that of Mint once before when, in 2021 she had discussions about potentially joining. “I met with Andrew and we had some nice chats about what I could bring to the business. But it wasn’t ready to accelerate growth or bring in any extra resources at that time. I really enjoyed my role at Assetz, and I could quite happily have stayed there and progressed in my career.”

However, another call “out of the blue” last October to arrange another chat and dinner with Lazare and the Mint board changed those plans. “I started smiling during that meal,” she said. “It was a fantastic opportunity to join a great, and still new-ish business, that wanted to grow and make change. I wanted to return to that fast transaction bridging month-end craziness. I was sad to leave Assetz, but the move was a no-brainer.”

Thomas said that her first 30 days in charge have been built around the three pillars of people, processes and systems.

“I have felt part of the Mint family immediately. The staff, customers and funders have been so engaging,” she said. “In fact, everyone has wanted a bit of Irene! They are so keen to find out what I am going to do!”

Her 50 plus strong team has been the first focus with a series of half an hour long “Mini Meets” with every single member of staff. “It was a commitment of mine to get to know them personally and find out about their lives, hobbies and commitments and career aspirations. I am naturally a nosey person, but I think it is important that you develop a strong trust relationship with your MD,” she said. “Now, we are working on their job titles and descriptions, the market value of those individuals and what is missing from the structure going forward. We will be going out and recruiting some key individuals.”

That means an internal valuer to help speed up the bridging process. A portfolio manager is also needed to manage the whole life of a customer’s loan and be in regular contact about areas such as an exit strategy.

Mint is also looking to recruit a credit manager to support the Head of Credit in mandating the business and an additional Business Development Manager to maintain contact with its brokers,

“Then as we grow, we will need additional underwriters in our development and bridging teams,” Thomas added. “I’m not talking about hiring lots of extra people. We don’t need that as we have a lot of talent here already and invested in technology to help our growth plans.”

Thomas has also been busy going out to meet the company’s key professional introducer and broker clients to discuss their frustrations in the bridging market generally and what Mint could do more to help.

“We are working on what our customer journey should look like. We want to improve customer excellence to make it more streamlined,” she said.

To that end Mint launched its ‘No Barriers’ campaign lasting throughout March. It is designed to remove friction at the outset of a deal, helping projects move faster and with greater certainty. As part of the campaign, brokers and borrowers are benefiting from no valuation fee for loans between £250,000 and £1,000,000 on residential kerbside property, no solicitor undertakings and no barriers to mandated underwriters.

“One of our key strengths is offering complete access to our decision makers. When we pick up the phone it could be me or someone else in the office. It doesn’t matter, we all have the same values,” she said.

Thomas said she has also picked up new ideas just by sitting in the Mint office. “The senior managers are all on the same floor as the rest of the team. You watch and you listen. You can see the occasional pain points. You can pick up the low hanging fruit and make some quick changes without the need for brown paper or Post-it notes,” she explained.

That includes underwriters making earlier calls to borrowers, introducing themselves and developing strong relationships. “These are calls now being made at the application stage rather than just prior to funding,” she said. “If you can ask the right questions and develop the right relationship you can ensure that everyone – broker, the customers and us – are all on the same page and there are no nasty surprises resulting in everyone wasting time and money. It’s also an example of having no barriers.”

Thomas promises more of these regular campaigns in the months ahead driven by findings from an anonymous colleague survey.

“We asked everyone what we should start doing, stop doing or continue doing,” she said. “We shared the findings with the staff and now we are setting up focus groups to decide what key actions we take forward as a collective. What do we want to change and what can we change.”

In terms of growth, Thomas said it will be steady as she goes in the short-term. “It is about continuing to build on what we have today. That focus on service because in the end people buy people,” she said.

It has been a busy first few weeks, but the real drive forward will begin in May. “I joined the company a little bit earlier than planned so I have, a holiday in Japan booked in April,” she said. “It will give people here some Irene free time to let them recover from the whirlwind of Irene! But when I return, our changes will really start to take effect. It will be Mint time once again.”

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