Innovation needed to stay in the game

30 May 2011 | By Sophie Hall, Director of business development, IntelliFlo

The Mortgage Business Expo this month was buzzing and not just because Manchester United is celebrating its 19th premiership title.

It doesn’t matter if you a Manchester United fan or not, you have to admire the consistency and resilience of a club to deliver such results. When the chips are down, particularly with all the outside distractions on the players, the team still delivers.

It was therefore appropriate to have the Expo at Old Trafford. The mortgage market has also had to deal with extraordinary times and the resilience of those in the market can only be admired.

Talking to friends and colleagues at the Expo, it was clear that most of them had had to look for alternative ways to service clients and introduce goods and services they may not otherwise have considered.

Looking around the stands it was clear that even now, innovative ways of helping clients are still being developed. One short-term provider was advertising finance for luxury goods such as sports cars, boats and jewellery.

It is worth asking yourself how well equipped your customer relationship management system is to deal with these additional products and services. How do you record if your client has taken anything out other than the expected products, such as mortgages and protection?

You need to make sure that as your business develops, your system can cope with new products. The last thing you need is to give your IT system the red card.

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