United Trust Bank expands mortgage underwriting team

By Bridging Loan Directory 7th December 2017

United Trust Bank has expanded and restructured its Mortgage Underwriting team to provide outstanding service to brokers and improved scalability in the face of increasing loan volumes.

Earlier this year UTB introduced its extended team of Mortgage and Bridging BDMs with a commitment to servicing brokers in more areas of the UK than ever before. In line with this, the Bank’s mortgage department has restructured its underwriting function into specific teams who will now manage the applications from brokers looked after by specific regional BDMs. This means that brokers deal with the same BDM and team of underwriters on every case they submit, leading to stronger relationships, continuity of decision making and a more personal service.

The restructure has led to several internal promotions and external hires. Gina Fry and Laura Eccles have been promoted to Underwriting Manager roles and David Burke has joined the Bank from NatWest to fulfill the same role.

Gina, Laura and David will report to Toby Wilson, who has been promoted to Head of Underwriting – Mortgages. The wider Mortgage team has grown to 25 people in less than 2 years with 13 having joined the team in 2017 alone.

UTB’s Mortgage business has achieved significant growth since launching in 2016 and as well as securing a considerable share of the second charge mortgage market it has also been widely welcomed by brokers and customers, winning four industry awards in the last 12 months.

Commenting on the changes, UTB’s Commercial Director – Mortgages, Buster Tolfree said:

“Our mortgage business is growing quickly and with plans for further product development in the future we wanted to ensure that our underwriting and servicing could continue to accommodate increasing volumes without letting our high standards slip.

“Organising the underwriting and servicing functions to support the brokers looked after by specific BDMs made perfect sense to us. We are a people business and enjoy building and maintaining strong, rewarding relationships with our introducers. Having three smaller teams dedicated to specific brokers will enable us and the brokers to get to know each other better and to build a greater understanding of each other’s businesses.

“As we continue to extend our product range and the number of brokers we deal with, we can easily replicate this model as needs require, ensuring that UTB remains a top pick for brokers and their customers.”