NatWest has shot up the ranks in 2022, achieving a commendable four stars in the mortgages category this year. 

Mark Bullard, head of intermediary sales, NatWest, said despite the challenging conditions for the UK over the past year, the company has worked hard to develop its propositions for advisers and clients.

Q: What did you put in place over the past 12 months to help advisers?

A: The past 12 twelve months has been another challenging period for the mortgage and housing market. We’ve continued to develop our product proposition to help more customers get on or up the housing ladder and help more landlords buy the property they want as well as supporting customers to stay with us for the long term. 

We’ve done this by introducing a number of changes to our criteria. For example, for new residential mortgage customers we’ve increased our loan to income ratio across the LTV bands, increased the maximum age and term and introduced a reduced five-year residential stress rate. 

We’ve supported our existing customers to be able to switch sooner with us – in July we extended the roll-off window from four to six months. And for BTL landlords we have increased the LTV for new-build BTL from 65 per cent to 75 per cent for both houses and flats. In addition, we’ve supported lending for greener homes through our Green Mortgages range. We want to continue to ensure customers and intermediaries alike can rely on NatWest for their mortgage needs. 

Q: Why is it important to support intermediary distribution?

A: Mortgage intermediaries provide an exceptional service to customers supporting them with their mortgage needs and good-quality mortgage advice. At NatWest we work with intermediary distribution partners to make sure that they have access to good products, good service and supportive colleagues to be able to help them deliver and support their customers to be able to thrive.

How have you helped advisers with challenges such as rising costs, hybrid working, etc?

We’ve continued to evolve the way we work with intermediaries. We have an intermediary sales team who support brokers face to face, on the phone and virtually through our LiveTalk service as well as our intermediary website. 

We listen to feedback from our brokers through our relationships and involve them in the development and testing of new products and services as well as through ongoing customer research. As a result of their feedback, we continually refine and evolve the way we work to ensure that we keep pace with how intermediaries like to work. 

For example, only this month we’ve launched our new Case Tracking which allows brokers to check the progress of their cases with us online. This enhanced service is quick and easy to use and is available to look at any time, so the broker can see the progress of their customers applications anytime it suits them without having to call us.  

Q: What are you planning to do over the next 12 months?

We’ll continue to build on the work we’ve done over the last 12 months. We’re here to support the intermediary market for the long term.

Over the next year we plan to enhance our overall proposition through improvements to products, service and digital tools to ensure intermediaries have the right proposition from NatWest they need to support their customers brilliantly.