Leeds pulls out of packager market

Natalie Holt
06-Oct-2008
The packaging industry continues to fall on hard times as Leeds announces that it is pulling the plug on its packager business.
The packaging industry continues to fall on hard times as Leeds announces that it is pulling the plug on its packager business.

Residential applications can be submitted until October 31, but Leeds has closed the door completely on its buy-to-let applications. Packagers were made aware of the move last week.

Leeds say the withdrawal from packaging will help the society to focus on its online offering, and maintains that the broker channel remains as important as ever.

Kim Rebecchi, director of sales at Leeds, says: “We constantly review our market proposition and have invested in improving our online functionality. This has enabled us to improve the speed and efficiency of our service, particularly to our brokers. We see this as a key part of our service proposition going forward.

“The broker-facing channel is responsible for a large portion of our business volumes and will continue to be extremely important. This move enables us to deliver our products to market quicker, control business volumes and maintain service to our key partners.”

She says the decision to close buy-to-let applications with immediate effect is in order to manage the flow of business, which is likely to be higher given last week’s nationalisation of Bradford & Bingley.

Rebecchi adds: “Leeds adopts a prudent approach to lending and as a result has a limited exposure to buy-to-let mortgages. Clearly one of the market advantages for packagers is that they can place relatively high volumes of business with different lenders.

“We wanted to make sure that we could control the flow of business, particularly with Mortgage Express exiting the market, maintain our prudent approach to lending and ensure that there is no detrimental impact on service."