Understanding customers. Getting them into houses. with Chris Schutrups
"It started by just going out and networking, listening to people, asking them what worked, what didn't work, you know, ringing up estate agents saying, look, I'd love to do your mortgages and walking up and down the high street with my briefcase."
As much as I love featuring VC-funded, AI-powered, alternative data-consuming startups on this show, it is well worth remembering that there's still a very big place for businesses built on human interactions - provided those interactions lead to better products, of course. In today's episode, I'm speaking to Chris Schutrups, founder of The Mortgage Hut and some of the UK's leading mortgage brands.
We cover that story of shaking hands and building businesses, of understanding people's needs and building products for them, but we also look at the role of professional advice in a world flooded with opinions, the current mortgage landscape and its opportunities there for brokers and lenders to work together for the benefit of borrowers, and how a changing drinking culture is changing pubs.
The Mortgage Hut is at home online at https://www.themortgagehut.co.uk/ They're also on LinkedIn over at https://www.linkedin.com/company/themortgagehut/ (Police Mortgages are there, too)
And speaking of LinkedIn, Chris is kind of a big deal on the platform, so you can join the 20,000+ of us following his insights over at https://www.linkedin.com/in/schutrups/
Or if it was the pubs that caught your interest, check out the great options at https://hendersonpub.co/. With summer finally showing signs of its approach, I might well take on the 2-hour coastal drive to get me to Romsey and The Hunters Inn.
I'm on LinkedIn, too, and eager to reach Chris's heights so I'm always open to new genuine connections - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanlegrange - and follow the show's page, too
Meanwhile, my action-adventure novels are on Amazon, some versions even for free, and my work with ConfirmU and our gamified psychometric scores is discussed at https://confirmu.com/ and on episode 24 of this show https://www.howtolendmoneytostrangers.show/episodes/episode-24
And finally, I'm also co-creating a new podcast called hAIghtened senses which will look at the intersection between human senses and technology, especially AI-powered technology. You can already start to follow it wherever you're listening to this one - there's only a trailer there at the moment, but we've recorded some of the early episodes and it's going to be a fun ride!
Keep well, Brendan
The full written transcript, with timestamps, is below:
Chris Schutrups 0:00
Digital marketing was not really a thing. It started by just going out and networking, listening to people, asking them what worked, what didn't work, you know, ringing up estate agents saying, look, I'd love to do your mortgages and walking up and down the high street with my briefcase, really. I just recently went with my cousin who works for Virgin Atlantic on a trip to Austin, and I ended up doing both of the pilots mortgages!
Like all businesses, it's about understanding the customer's needs, their pain points, and trying to work out where we can stand out and make a difference and have an incredible customer experience and good customer outcomes where others can't.
Brendan Le Grange 0:41
May is going to be an exciting month for me with the launch of hAIghtened senses, the new podcast I'm co creating with Christo van Zyl, a South African helicopter pilot turned Swedish entrepreneur with a particular interest in the world of AI powered sensors. If you're listening to this show, you won't actually be able to miss it because I'll be dropping the first episode into this feed when the time comes. However, there is a trailer out now. So please do find it wherever you're listening to this and follow it in its own right. Also, the social media feeds are busy being created, so if I bother you soon to follow a page or two, please do oblige. That's hAIghtened senses with an AI.
In that show, we'll be speaking to entrepreneurs in the tech world wonder kids building the sort of high risk but highly scalable businesses that VCs love to back. But there's still a place in this world for the sort of entrepreneur who builds a business by fostering human relationships, knocking on doors, shaking hands, speaking to people on aeroplanes, and by them building products for the people they meet along the way.
Welcome to How to Lend Money to Strangers with Brendan le Grange. Chris Schutrups, founder of some of the UK is leading mortgage brands, welcome to the show.
Chris Schutrups 2:09
Thanks for having me.
Brendan Le Grange 2:10
Chris, your career started in stock broking and good old fashioned banking, but took a few interesting turns along the way... but I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. So talk to me about those early days.
Chris Schutrups 2:20
So actually, I left college early because I was a bit of a socialite and the principal said to me Look, I think it may be you start again next year. And I went home, and I went down to Primark, which was a brand new concept then, bought a £30 suit, and did the rounds of all the recruitment agents. And luckily for me, HSBC, were the first ones to offer me a job. And I did four weeks training with them and was like the class clown, and by chance, I was actually pretty good at job.
I was an unregulated seller I worked selling essentially credit cards, loans, pre credit crunch. So customers would call up and say, I'm interested in taking their loan and you'd say, okay, how much do you want? And they'd say, Well, eight grand, and he would say, well, how about taking 15. So started unregulated seller for HSBC, moved on to being a stockbroker in the city, which was, again, pre crash, we brought IPOs to the market, everything from mining companies through to ASOS, which was called As Seen On Screen at the time, Domino's Pizza into the UK. So for a kid who came from a council house, and you know, had sort of dropped out of college, it was very glamorous, I thought, at the time.
Brendan Le Grange 2:47
Then there was a spell consulting in the mortgage space. And I figure it must have triggered something, because in 2011, you started your entrepreneurial journey in that world of mortgages. Was entrepreneurship always a goal of yours? Or was this something that you sort of learned about yourself or just stumbled into?
Chris Schutrups 3:50
You know, it's a great question. Actually, I had, like a lot of people, had some businesses at school, you know, I hired a web server and divided it up and sold web hosting and sold some signal boosters, and some sweets from briefcases and stuff, you know, the cliche entrepreneur stories, I guess.
And, you know, I work for an estate agency, a corporate estate agency, who trained me as a mortgage advisor, I'd gone from stock broking. And I sort of had a bit of a gut feeling, I wouldn't say that I knew what was coming but the mood turned in the city pretty quick and I came back and I worked in banking for a very short period of time, as a branch manager for NatWest and it went from getting up at 4am in the morning and getting home at 10 to sort of unlocking this rural country branch and out west and sitting on the couch all day talking to old people. And it was it was like ying and yang.
So I went into mortgages, started with a corporate estate agent and went pretty well I was enjoying it did very well in the region that I was in and I worked with an estate agent who said I'm going to start my own estate agency, you should do my mortgages. And I thought bloody hell I'm going to be driving a Bentley before I know it, gold plated teeth, I'm going to be living the dream.
And so that's how the journey started with the mortgages. I have to say I wasn't in a Bentley very quickly, and it was a bit of a journey. But it's been, you know, a great one along the way for sure.
Brendan Le Grange 5:03
This is obviously a show about lending and that Mortgage Story is going to be the core of it. But I wanted to take a little bit of a detour because in 2011, the same year you were starting The Morgtage Hut, you also went on a very different sort of career journey, and I'm quite interested in that. You joined the the Hampshire and Isle of Wight constabulary as a Special Constable. So what inspired that, was police in the family?
Chris Schutrups 5:27
Well, I'd love to tell you that I come from a long line of police officers, but actually, I met a shift from Hampshire police on a night out and I made friends with them. And what you can't tell from me sat at a desk because I'm actually 6ft 7in. So they said you would make a fantastic police officer and I thought, oh, you know, that sounds like good fun.
And I got halfway through the training. I thought, this is a pain. And I kept going and joined as a Special Constable which is the route to generally becoming a regular police officer. I loved a lot of elements of the job. At the time. In Hampshire, we had things called area cars, which were the big 5 series BMWs and would turn up toward the 999 calls. And it was it was great fun, it really was, but talking about entrepreneurial flair, I did think to myself, is this me for the next 30 years. You know, because police officers do an incredible job, shape people's lives, make change, but actually their incomes pretty set coming from a background of being a stockbroker where, you know, I was earning significant amount a month back down to a normal income.
I thought to myself, you know, the stockbroking taught me that money didn't make you happy, for sure, but on the same account, I wasn't sure that sustaining on the income was going to be the lifestyle that I wanted to pursue either, I guess.
Brendan Le Grange 6:41
Yeah. And obviously, you stayed in that area in terms of charity work you're doing with organisations in the policing world. Yeah. And you did start Police Mortgages as a specialist provider. I thought for a moment, it was an intentional move to learn the learn the tricks from the inside.
Chris Schutrups 6:56
Oh, it was it was brilliant, because I just started the mortgage business. And actually, as I eluded, a guy, who was a friend of mine said, I'm gonna start an estate agency, you do the mortgages for me, which was great... until he didn't start as an estate agency. And suddenly, I had no lead sources. And not a lot of money. I'd started the business with 10 grand, and I'd already spent six grand of it by the time the door would open.
And so what was really great was when I went into the police station, so I'd volunteer two or three days a week, normally a Friday, Saturday night, where, you know, the real fun stuff happened, I guess I'm gonna have to say that because I'm not in that place anymore. And every time I went into the police station, so I'm gonna you, you're that you're the mortgage guy, right. And then I actually have a mortgage, and I need help with it. So it started with my colleague, then it spread to the wider sort of area, and then eventually a lot of people in in the force.
And at that point, I was thinking, You know what, maybe there's an issue, maybe this is a great niche, because they're hard working, police officers can't be made redundant. So you know, from a lending point of view, there's a lot of stability in that their income is fairly fixed, the trajectories defined by a police pay scale. And they do have some challenges, if they get adverse credit, it can cause some challenges at work. So that limits the number of people who do end up it doesn't stop it completely, but does limit the number of people in financial distress. So that's how it started.
Brendan Le Grange 8:18
Really, you know, if you think about today, at the big data world, there's a lot of hyper targeting of segments, because we've got all the online data and we can rebrand the same thing over and over in different ways and try different ads and A-B test things online. But there's always been this value in being able to understand a niche and and tweak a product for them.
But I want to come back and sort of reestablish a chronological order here. In 2011, you were building mortgage hat, you had had this little bit of, you know, sort of childhood entrepreneurship. You've had a number of careers in the banking space and public facing space at this stage. But as you started, you're trying to get this off the ground already your core lead, as we've heard, disappeared. What was that process like?
Chris Schutrups 9:02
You know, it was it was a journey really spent a lot of time listening to people who were already in industry, asking them what worked, what didn't work, digital marketing was not really a thing.
It started by just going out and networking, you know, ringing up estate agents saying, Look, I'd love to do your mortgages and walking up and down the high street with my briefcase, really, and with no money. You know, remember I used to get paid the commission from the banks on a Wednesday, and I go to my mom and dad's house on a Monday and borrow some stuff to make some lunch. I was that poor and I had a pregnant girlfriend at the time and a rental property. And it was through stubbornness really that I persevered.
But you know, it was definitely not very glamorous, I would say.
Brendan Le Grange 9:40
But it's also great to hear that in in a modern setting. I mean, in a way in hindsight, knowing it turns out well. You know, obviously, there's a bit of a cliche that you're out of touch parents will tell you to put on a suit and take your CV to the local store to apply for a job but there's still a reality to their day if you willing to walk around shaking and knock on doors, you can make your business work. It's not all VC backed do wonder kid startup in the in the AI space.
And you've built some of the most well known mortgage brands in the UK because it's not just mortgage hype. So, talk to me a bit about what you've built that into and what their business looks like today.
Chris Schutrups 10:18
There's a couple of things that we like we like an underdog story. founders are very passionate about what they do and what they believe in. And generally, they will tell anyone who's willing to listen to it.
So the mortgage business has been on a journey. You know, as time has gone on, we've eked out niches. So our main mortgage brand deals with everyone from vanilla customers all the way through to you know, on organically using long tail search terms with number one for like limited company directors, self employed bad credit complex customers who may be, you know, I would say come to us sometimes expecting the worst, but the UK market mortgage market performs exceptionally well and is a good example of how our capital market should work.
There's normally an option for someone you know, and so we deal with over 100 inquiries from customers every day, our team of advisers, we do hundreds and hundreds of mortgages every month completed. And then we have specialist brands like the police as you say we're lucky enough to work with 23 of the UK Police Federation's we deal with forces directly as well.
We also work with aviation. So again, smelling out niches, my wife, who had been a mortgage advisor by chance previously, I swear it wasn't set up like this, I met her when she was cabin crew for British Airways. And I used to go on an awful lot of trips with her. And every time I got on the plane, the pilots or the cabin crew, which was so difficult getting mortgages because our incomes non taxable because we don't pay tax in the UK because half of its earned overseas and it's expensive. And it's this and it's that and say well, that's not a very complicated problem, actually.
You know, I just recently went with my cousin who works for Virgin Atlantic on a trip to Austin with her. And I ended up doing both of the pilots mortgages, the head, cabin crew will get it. So you know, again, it's that having conversations and sort of smelling an issue that and now we work alongside some of the teams that British Airways Virgin Atlantic, we deal with pilots from across the world, really, because you have a lot of pilots who are based overseas.
So quite a far reaching business. We have teams of specialists there that's really important. They understand how it's done. But I would say like all businesses, it's about talking to customers, understanding the customer's needs their pain points, and trying to work out where we can stand out and make a difference and have an incredible customer experience and good customer outcomes where others can't.
Brendan Le Grange 12:41
You've already established a very deep knowledge of the UK mortgage landscape and mortgage scene. But actually, you've also now got international experience, because more recently, you've been working in Dubai.
So talk to me about how you're brought in there. And then maybe a little bit about what working in Dubai has taught me what the landscape looks like there and how that's different to what you were used to in the UK?
Chris Schutrups 13:06
Well, honestly, it's fascinating, I genuinely believe that anyone who works in finance or has an interest in finance would be amazed at the differences.
So actually, in 2018, I was approached by a business called property finder, it's essentially the right move here in the UK of the Middle East, backed by the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, and they had bought this mortgage business that had not really performed as well as they had hoped. And so I got approached on LinkedIn by their head of HR saying, look, your name has been mentioned, you know, I think maybe you'd be a good candidate for this. And essentially, I said, I'm not looking for a job, I've got mortgage business, I've got a company, I'm more than happy.
And I don't know, like with my wife, you know, one minute she wasn't living in the house, the next minute, she was - similar in this situation. But one minute, I said, Look, I'm not looking for a job, I'm happy to speak to the Chief Commercial Officer and next minute, I'm arriving with my suitcases running the biggest mortgage business in the Middle East!
So the differences were that mortgages are effectively unregulated in the Middle East, which meant on the first day, when I landed, I looked at some of our competitors marketing, and they would take the rate from one product and the fee from another product and the standard variable from another product. And they would just put it all on one poster and pretend it was one product.
And the other thing was, you know, in the UK, one of the great things about the mortgage market is it has generally speaking, most mortgage lenders pay the same commission to intermediaries. It's a relatively similar thing. So there's not really the issue of price bias. Whereas one of the challenges I faced when I went in there was the bank that we recommended. Were not offering the best product. They were actually probably offering the fifth best product.
And I sat down around the table and I had to explain to them I understood they paid us the most commission and we were grateful for that. But the less they were willing to offer us the best product and the best outcomes for our customers. We wouldn't be recommending them anymore.
So you know, it was a very, very different world.
And I took the approach, which worked exceptionally well for us and building trust in the brand with because we had a great parent company that had an incredible brand incredible trust, you know, we essentially introduced our own compliance infrastructure, our own systems and processes. And you know, we suddenly went from saying, you know, what, let's try and make the most money to let's have the best customer outcomes.
Because if you run a business like that, whether that be a lender, whether that be an intermediary, whatever the business may be, if you put the customer at the heart of what you do, you actually will make money anyway.
Brendan Le Grange 15:32
When I started my career, 20 years ago, compliance was the guy you ran away from, as long as he didn't talk to you, you could do do what you want it. Yeah. And the advice business, I mean, you would know as well, from the stock broking world, you've had a lot of bad stories from from advice givers in general. And as you say, the UK is actually quite well regulated on that front, but around the world, that trust is vital to establish and to make transparent. So yeah, fascinating to hear kind of a real world use case of that.
Chris Schutrups 16:00
You can only really affect this stuff, if you actually believe it, you know, actually as a leader, if you believe it, right at the core of you, and you lead from the front with that. And that's the message that you're there.
And in the financial game, fundamentally, it's all about trust, you know, it's all about trust, and it's easily lost and very hard to win. But you have to, for a long term successful business, in financial advice, you have to strive to actually have the best customer outcomes, because otherwise long term that's gonna rot you somewhere somewhere in the business, there's going to be a rot that's going to take you down, I think is my opinion.
Brendan Le Grange 16:36
Yeah. And I think certainly, if you think about the mortgage world, and in particularly in the UK, where refinancing is always available, you aren't going to get caught out in the 30 years that customers sitting there with a mortgage when they say, wait a minute, yeah, why am I getting such a big deal? Well,
Chris Schutrups 16:50
We are lucky, you know, the regulator in the UK, they have very independent, they do a very good job. Indeed,
Brendan Le Grange 16:56
Chris, you obviously spend a lot of your day talking to the borrowers to the customers about mortgages. But with my show, I'm talking often to the lenders, we've gone through a period of decades of stable, almost non existent interest rates, that suddenly changed overnight.
But as lenders look at the the mortgage market today, and they think about the different products they offering, with your experience in the market, with your experience abroad, with your experiences, day to day seeing what our borrowers are looking for, what are some things that mortgage lenders should be considering when they design their products? What's seeming to work well, for customers in the current environment?
Chris Schutrups 17:36
There is lots of innovation in the market. You know, I listened to your podcast recently with Perenna, you know, there are some great lenders who, you know, Kensington, who are now owned by Barclays came out with a similar fixed for the lifetime of the mortgage product, which gives stability for consumers a little bit like the adoption of technology, okay, the market can only move as quickly as consumers move, there has to be a bit of a fundamental mindset shift in looking at longer term fixed rates, because the fear that I think borrowers have is that, you know, we're great as humans at the end, super optimistic.
Although we realistically know now that rates are not going to go down to zero point something percent, I think secretly, some borrowers still in their heart hoping for that to come back. And so we're like, you know, what I don't want to fix for 25 years, just in case, there have been some bad practices, where pricing, there's been some push on headline, interest rates, but some exorbitant fees, percentage based fees. You know, I think the reality is that lenders, where they really differentiate themselves is on criteria, you know, you've got two lending models really volume, which is rate driven, which has been for the last couple of years, even before rates came up, margins, were really starting to get squeezed there, or you've got like criteria and niche based lending, you know, but there are some great lenders out there at the moment, digital mortgages, you know, we just had a mortgage that my colleague told me about where it's a purchase at 95%.
And the lenders done a desktop route, you know, that's unheard of they are able to offer within one day.
And so there's, I think it's harder generally for larger legacy lenders to be able to pivot quickly because they have legacy systems, you know, no one, as much as the leaders of large footsy banks want to innovate and change, they have to balance that with risk of, you know, we only have think back to TSB a couple of years ago, where some customers were locked out of their bank accounts for up to six months missing mortgage payments, their salaries weren't credited in a botched IT migration and so, and I am only only imagining this, I'm not saying this is what happens, but if I was a CEO in my mid 50s, maybe getting close to retirement, we have a great share package and options, would I want to change the world? Probably not.
Would I want to innovate slowly? Probably.
And so we've got some really good smaller lenders predatory and one, you know, digital mortgages, we've got loads of other ones coming into market who are innovating. And I think part of their challenge is that brokers themselves have to be more aware of the options. Education is always the number one challenge for these lenders really in changing mindsets.
Brendan Le Grange 20:17
Just thinking as you're talking, they're probably the same frustration that doctors feel because now me as a borrower, I can easily go into Google and search and get 100 bits of advice and articles written and some of those are paid for articles. Some are not, it must be a different sort of challenge to what it was when you started
Chris Schutrups 20:36
Our advisors in the business actually, every single day meet a different lenders, either underwriter, Business Development Manager to understand changes in criteria will give them high level data on types of customers we're seeing, and then we're able to understand that so first of all, it's having the advisors having the right competency skills knowledge to be able to make sure that they can answer these questions.
As you said, TikTok is great for some really viral videos about how you can save money here or do this. And the problem that you have as well is that tick tock, you know, I can think of a couple of really successful tick tock influencers, they might be British, but design their videos for the US market. And products are very different regulations very different. And so it's just about having conversations with customers.
I think it's about being open as well. You know, the great thing is Google is incredible at being able to sift out what is good quality content, what's AI written? You know, I've been saying for a little while, don't write content from AI, because Google will start to pick up on that. And you know, that's we're seeing some of our competitors now really getting heavily penalised on Google rankings, because they use now driven content.
Most of our customers will start online reading articles, understanding answering those longer term questions, and then the adviser has been able to answer it, but you're right, they do get false information, the challenge that we have, with social media being so unregulated, I could start a page tomorrow and profess to be an absolute wizard. And as maybe being a doctor, you know, I could give medical advice. But in reality, doctors have done seven, eight years of training, you know, they've studied under people who actually know what they're doing as well.
So, you know, misinformation, I guess, is a challenge across all industries. From a good consumer output point of view. You want the customers to speak to someone like a broker, or a financial adviser or someone to answer the questions, even if they don't then transact with them, even if they transact directly executed themselves, having all the knowledge and information available to them.
Brendan Le Grange 22:30
Yeah, I guess I'd say that the worst case is that they feel that they've got all the information a broker would have given them and act on it.
Chris Schutrups 22:37
You don't know what you don't know. Yeah, it's the challenge.
Brendan Le Grange 22:39
Now, one last thing I want to check with you is you spoke about the sort of the one day turn around, you know, mortgages can be such a stressful and busy part of your life, you're looking for that house, there's five people bidding on it, you've got to make an offer today, you've got to get solicitors and surveyors out, you've got to try and look at their schools here. And where's the train station, you've got a lot going on, even in the smallest of moves.
And there's always been this thing, oh, the mortgage is going to take weeks, and it's going to be a pain to do. But again, a lot of this, I think is handed down wisdom, because you're speaking to your parents who maybe got a mortgage 20 years ago, or your friend got a mortgage 10 years ago, and the world is obviously changing very quickly. Obviously, one day mortgages are not the norm and not where we expect the world to exist in that space.
But what is that mortgage process like if I want to go and get a new mortgage today?
Chris Schutrups 23:27
I guess, when we talk about one day mortgages, which is, as you say, not super common, they are they're, you know, we're almost as surprised as the customers are sometimes with when it comes through. But you know, the process in itself is by brokers relatively similar, you know, we will speak to a customer and there are some businesses, you know, my friend runs a very large mortgage business that they transact only with the customers on live chat, make the recommendations on live chat.
And the brokers can go from doing 10 mortgages to potentially 60 mortgages a month. Ultimately, someone is still generally normally manually keying that into a lender system at the moment, but you touched on it, okay, if you get a one day mortgage, it really doesn't make a huge difference. Actually, it takes away the anxiety. It gives you certainty because in the UK mortgage offers are legally binding. As long as you haven't missed, disclosed or committed fraud, something similar material fact has been emitted.
What you then have is probably still a fairly drawn out process with a solicitor who's still doing manual land registry checks and ordering inquiries in and ordering searches. And you've got a long chain and a little bit like you and I probably won't get on a plane at the moment without a pilot planes can find themselves without pilots. And I hate to ruin the careers for some of our customers who work for British Airways and Virgin Atlantic and and vying for the amazing work that they do.
But in reality that there is potential for planes to fly themselves, but we're not comfortable with that yet, as consumers and I guess that there is a place where mortgages will be instant, a little bit like when you go on to Amazon, you buy something and you blink and you think wow, did I actually buy that and it reacts on our impulse. And it's a frictionless purchase.
Okay, what we need to be careful of is that mortgages, we don't just have a single mortgage source providing one product that is frictionless where people end up taking a product that maybe isn't suitable for them.
Brendan Le Grange 25:16
Yeah, so the idea of friction right, and it's come up before and for mortgage, you want the cooling off period, but the lender should be thinking about the experience of that. And is that that approval? Okay, you've got 200,000 approved? Yes, yeah, the last receipt that says we're checking some bits and pieces, but I've got my place to go to my plan A, and I know my mount, and it covers this house I want to buy, I can make an offer, and
Chris Schutrups 25:40
You can't return your house that you bought, you know, your Amazon, if you buy the toilet brush that you don't need, you can send it back. And this is where financial regulations interesting, because, you know, as consumers, and I'm a consumer, when I make this comment, we can't be trusted solely to make the right decisions all the time.
Because if you buy a house, you probably only buy a house every 6/ 7/ 8/ 10 years, 15 years, whatever it may be. And so, mortgage is in stable markets, like the UK where prices are relatively consistent, because there's a severe under supply of stock being built. You know, it's a relatively stable lending environment, lenders probably can make a lot of the decisions now without documents, and it's just about moving in that direction. And you know, there are risk committees, from a regulation point of view, you don't want to move too quickly and end up in a new stage 2008
Brendan Le Grange 26:31
Yeah and I think we all we all understand, when we start the house hunting purchase, how unique most houses are in the UK, it's obviously got an old house stock where every house has its quirks. I lived in Hong Kong for eight years. And, you know, we looked at apartments to rent. And I remember going to one, it was like the 70th floor of one of 16 blocks in a development. Each of those flats is essentially the same, the amount of price dates you've got, you know, they're selling hundreds of them every week. And so as a bank, if you're wanting to do automatic pricing, you want to check things, you've got so much certainty around the value of that flat because it's exactly the same as one that was sold a week ago. But that doesn't exist for most normal houses, even though my house yeah, I mean, a little estate that they're all built at the same time, they look pretty much the same. They're slightly different gardens, slightly different parking, slightly different sizes, different directions they facing.
Even those make a real difference when you're talking a 30 year mortgage, and the further you go from the city, the more that's true, you can't escape the link to the house.
Chris, if people listening I guess from either sides, they might be interested in talking to you, if people wanted to speak to you want to learn more about mortgage, how to other brands, underneath that umbrella, were some good places for them to go online to keep track of that?
Chris Schutrups 27:49
If they want to follow me personally, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on most of the social media platforms, we obviously have our website, which has over a million unique visitors, you can subscribe to our newsletter, you know, we write a lot of interesting content around niches within the markets, you know, and where new opportunities come up.
Yeah, and my advice would be even if it's not our business, in that process, it's always worth speaking to brokers, well worth getting good quality advice, even if you don't take their advice, and you do it yourself. You know, the great thing is that most mortgage advisors in the UK will give the advice for free. If they do charge a fee, they're only charging to process the application they're not charging for the advice. So you know, get some second opinions.
You know, there's lots of great online content, just make sure that the people that are giving you that information are credible are are experienced and qualified to do so.
Brendan Le Grange 28:36
It's a great resource for lenders as well to be sense- checking their products to make sure we're building products that actually serve the borrowers' needs, create their conversation so that when you innovate when you bring out something new, the brokers understand the product and can pass that on, but equally that you're hearing from them in the design.
And Chris before we let you go there's one more thing I want to talk about it. In the last couple of years, you've also started to build out a restaurant and pub empire. So as we close just talk to me about that how you got into hospitality.
Chris Schutrups 29:08
I still describe it as maybe a bit of an unhealthy hobby.
But you know, we have some absolutely incredible businesses within the group that we either own or invested in some restaurants some high end restaurants and pubs which are generally rural country some bars competitive socialising, by the way is the next big thing shuffleboard electronic darts you know all of these things because nearly 30% of 18 to 25 year olds now don't drink so the drinking culture is changing a little bit like in restaurants catering for vegans and intolerances and allergies and allergens. It is very very different to financial services.
Our customer buying journey in financial services long trust base the cash flow window is very very long. Our hospitality if someone eats in you know I've got a restaurant in Southampton in the marina with just one best restaurant and the British restaurant awards. If someone's eating a meal there, maybe they're going on a first date, the money's in the bank account tomorrow.
But there are other challenges, you know, you tend to find that mortgage advisors are relatively stable beings, they're regulated, they're pretty normal people, sometimes chefs can be a bit more flamboyant, we say I picked my words wisely, because we have over 400 people working across the group. And it's an interesting business, it's exactly the same concept, putting the customer at the heart of what you do customer experience, you know, speaking to customers understanding what the needs are a little bit like the lenders do directly with customers directly with brokers understanding data, we're one a few businesses, I think that will literally email every customer personally, the day after they visited with us and ask them how the experience was. That's not an automated email. Some actually does that.
My role within the businesses is sitting back and saying, what's the opportunity? What are other people doing? You know, how do we drive forward? And it is a cliche, and I'm sorry for it. But if you're not moving forward, you're you're definitely going backwards. And so that's what I try and encourage our management teams across all of the businesses that I'm lucky enough to work with, is saying how do we continue to be better, you know, good customer outcomes, helping them into the house, having people come out and have a good time. That's why we run businesses: having happy customers.
Brendan Le Grange 31:13
Yeah, so I'll put links to Henderson in the show notes as well. But around that Southampton sort of area, as you said, some really lovely settings in the countryside, or some stuff right in the heart of town for their younger folk listening.
Chris has been an absolute pleasure having you on thanks for sharing your insights,
Chris Schutrups 31:30
Pleasure's all mine. Thank you
Brendan Le Grange 31:31
And thank you all for listening.
Please do look for and follow the show on your favourite podcast platform and share the updates widely on LinkedIn where lending nerds are found in our largest concentration. Plus, send me a connection request while you're there.
This show is written and recorded by myself Brendan le Grange in Brighton, England and edited by Fina Charleson of FC Productions.
Show music is by Iam_wake, and you can find show notes and written transcripts at www.HowtoLendMoneytoStrangers.show and I'll see you again next Thursday.