Transforming Mortgage Brokering with AI - Matt Surridge

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Transcript

  📍 Hello, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Mortgage Mavericks podcast. And in today's episode, we are joined by Matthew Surridge from M Powered Mortgages. M Powered Mortgages. We've actually been chatting for quite a while before this has actually come into fruition. So I'm very excited to have you on the show, Matthew.

Welcome to the show, mate. Yeah, thanks, Ash. Yeah, really excited to be on the show. Thank you. Yeah. It's a long time coming. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even think we need to give everyone a real idea of the time, but it's been like a year, I think nearly, is it probably has been about a year coming up to a conversation about it, but there's been so much going on.

Yeah, it always seems like we've had to rearrange it one reason or another, but here we are, we finally got it. That's what I saw this morning when I saw you, my diary and I was like, Oh, great. It's actually going to happen. You're an elusive man, but it's good to do. When I turned up, right? So anyway, I turned up, you knew it was going to happen.

That is the point. Yeah. To be fair, like you're an important man. You do an important job, which is what we'll talk about today. And so you never know if that you get that last minute I'm sorry, I'm going to have to cancel. Especially. I'm always aware of this with podcasts because I get it myself.

They're always. The funnest thing to do, but the first thing to remove when business is needed. It's one of those like kind of things of really sorry, can we move it? And I have to my people in the podcast sometimes too. So I completely get it. So Matthew, people who don't know who you are, don't know who empowered is.

Let's just Just lay the ground at the beginning. Just give us a bit of a backstory as to who you are and what you do. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I tell you what, if it's okay with you, I'll talk about who empowered are and my role within empowered. It makes more sense than the other way around.

That, that kind of makes more sense to me.

So the easiest way to to explain who empowered are.

So Ash when you think about empowered firstly, we sound like a utility company that started doing mortgages, , everyone's always gonna make that, that first association. Really I never made that association, but now I won't be able to unmake it. . When I started working a few years ago and people didn't know anything about us and never heard us before.

That was like, that was the first thing people used to say to me, which, it's fine. Absolutely. But so for those who don't know anything about us yet, we're not a utility company. But for those that, That they would like to say more. Essentially we're a prime residential lender and we've got a really clear mission.

What we want to do is create positive, fast outcomes for mortgage brokers and their customers. We use cutting edge data science machine learning, AI. In order essentially to achieve the outcomes people want swiftly with the minimal amount of effort and work is actually. doing the mortgage application.

And that's really important because I was a mortgage broker for many years and the part of the job I really enjoyed and fundamentally I see as being the core reason that people go and spend time with mortgage brokers. is for the advice that they give and brokers cannot give the best advice if they're spending all their time filling out application.

It's all hard facts. It's not soft facts. We want people discussing customers, aspirations, goals, concerns. Help them understand the decisions that are available and the implications of those decisions and helping them actually make informed decisions. I'm about to say, but make informed decisions as well.

And they can only do that if they commit the largest proportion of their time with having conversations, getting to know people. So if we can reduce. The other part, the administrative part of it. Firstly, that should hopefully provide better outcomes for customers. And the second part of it as well is about giving customers almost a level playing field and some fast certainty.

Now we live in an environment where consumers are very much instant access to so many services. That could be, I want to nip to the train station right now, I can jump on my app and I can order myself a taxi and I even know when it's going to arrive and I can follow that taxi. To its destination of my house.

So I know when to be out the door. If I needed a suitcase for this trip, I could jump on Amazon. I could have it ordered. I know it's coming in the morning, or if I wanted to watch an old movie, I could literally just stream that and just pop it on Netflix. So we've got this instant gratification.

Now mortgages are somewhat more complex and we work in, rightly, a very regulated industry. But we still have customers with those expectations. And we feel actually we can start to deliver on those expectations. So that's when we lean on, the latest technology, the AI to try and drive those outcomes very quickly and automate a lot of that process.

It does a couple of things for me. It starts to level that playing field. We've got a lot of people out there who, will still perceive cash buyers as the ideal purchaser, they're the ones with the buying power. But actually, if I could agree my mortgage and almost get it instantly or within 20 minutes, What's the real difference there in buying power?

So actually it's giving everybody an opportunity to get the home they want, maybe rather than getting someone sweeping with a slightly lower offer but perceived as being in, in a better position. So it's around, yeah, just bringing the mortgage industry up to 21st century. I started in 2003 as a broker.

And there's only really been modest changes since then. I used to use DX and fax machines that has fortunately been left behind but we still don't embrace everything that's out there. And that's what MPower is about. It's about giving all the brokers and all their customers, the benefit of the tech that's available today.

That's a bit of a waffle, actually. No, it's perfect. It's given me so many questions. It's stuff to double click into. So I'd never really thought of it that way, and that's quite a really interesting point of levelling the playing field from a cash buyer to a mortgage buyer. Because when I used to be an estate agent, that obviously is always the thing.

It's the, how long is it going to take? And you say there's not really much in it. As cash buyer could still be cash in a in an investment that could go horribly wrong tomorrow when you don't have the cash. People don't really fully understand that. But I hadn't thought about how the tech that you guys utilize, which is what we will be talking about, obviously through the show, because the tech that you were using is mind blowing stuff that you actually have.

And as someone who understands AI and stuff that you actually do, as we were talking about earlier, I was on a call with your AI engineers and like me and him, we're just nerding out loads because the actual idea of he was like, you're built on Claude and Anthropic. And then I was like, Oh, this is brilliant.

But the amount of people that like the stuff that powers, what you do to give those outcomes, it's quite impressive. So one of my questions to you and about empowered in general is what you do all this stuff. You said, that's the reason why, but how important is innovation? That's what I would ask you.

How important is innovation and being at the cutting edge of this new tech wave and this new kind of consumption patterns that you just spoke about? How important is that to both Empowered and also do you believe to the future of the industry? It's a great question. Really good question actually.

And I think the easiest way to, to probably validate some of what I'm going to say is to focus on the feedback we get from users. Now, let's make no bones about it. If someone can get a mortgage in minutes, is that the priority with the advice that's given? Now, I'm hoping the answer is absolutely not, right?

The advice should be what's best for the customer, their circumstances, based on the options that are out there. What I would like to think is when we fit that category, Or there's several lenders that would fit that category. The ability to act quickly and get outcomes very quickly is just another factor that's taken into consideration.

So I think from a fundamental advice perspective, it's not the be all and end all. However, when I look at things like Trustpilot and I see some of the comments people put on social media. Now, I'm one of these people who aren't huge. On social media. I have LinkedIn and that is it. Not going to find me on Facebook, Instagram or call it Twitter.

I think the name has changed. So I only see the stuff that's on LinkedIn. But the comments, especially since more and more of our automation has been released and can take a lot of the heavy lifting away from the underwriters, which is ultimately what drives the speed of these the positive feedback has been really overwhelming.

I've had the conversation with, funnily enough, and it's crazy. The people you bump into this industry throughout your career, We're really excited last week that we had a record submission of app to offer time. Now, it was from pressing submit to getting the offer was nine minutes. Now I know some people are quite skeptical.

Other lenders can give me an offer, almost instantly. And I'm not saying they can't, but they take a slightly different approach. So their approach is a risk based approach is, we will not ask or look at certain things and that will drive a faster outcome. And that is great. But what that doesn't allow you to do is scale.

So what we want to do is start driving those expectations of timescale to people with higher LTVs, more complicated circumstances. So having a case that has been fully underwritten, this is not ignoring the facts. certain factors. It's fully underwriting the case using the AI, the deep learning machine technology, data science, and driving that off right in nine minutes was really exciting for us.

It was a real big buzz last week when that happened. And it seemed every day we had a new record, which was crazy. Everyone keeps getting a new one a few seconds or a few minutes faster. And I wanted to give the broker a call really just to thank them. for their business. And the broker's named Jean Cardone.

And funny enough, about 14 years ago, I was a financial advisor at Lloyds Bank and she was the mortgage broker who was my colleague in the branch I worked at. So I was able to give her a call and just say, look, thank you very much. Really appreciate your support. Hopefully you and your customer are really pleased that it was turned around so quickly.

And she went actually, It was specifically helpful for this customer. And the reason being was the customer had struggled getting some of the packaging requirements that were needed for for compliance within their firm. Obviously we all know they need to get a certain amount of bank statements, pay slips, et cetera.

And the customer was having a real issue getting some of those documents from their previous employer. And what that had meant was. They were coming right up to the precipice of their mortgage going SVR. And we all know, even if you are remortgage at the moment, that is a painful change.

That is a big change. Like I've been looking that SVR is no joke. I think we spoke about it in our, when, in our couple of calls recently or about the change in those svs. I looked at mine, it was like nearly 9%. Yeah. And I thought. Wow. I was like, don't be wrong. I can afford it, but wow. Yeah. I like to spend money, but I like to spend on the things I want.

Yeah. And and what this has meant, obviously we're still hampered on timescale from a conveyancing perspective, but it could mean that person probably only runs into their SVR for one payment because, they got their mortgage sorted in nine minutes. If you take into account the keying of the application, on average keying in a dip in a full app and submitting it with us runs around 10 minutes for the lot.

So actually we could be looking at under 20 minutes to start it and get your offer. Yeah. And the customers probably got a huge relief that if the solicitors can really get going with this. Possibly give them avoid an SVR payment altogether. Wow. Long winded answer to your question, Ash. But when you put it in terms of the impact, I think it is really important that the industry moves along with this technology.

Yeah, no. And again, long winded answers is what podcasts are for, Matthew. So that's absolutely fine, mate. Don't, that's what I want. Cause it gives me more things to ask because that's something I, as we've said, like You said you alluded to earlier about this idea of, the industry you said you'd been in since 2003 and there's not been much innovation and change since that time.

And I always feel like that way. I feel like there hasn't been much. And it, and actually I was speaking to somebody who's in the tech space outside of financial services, who was doing some consulting and financial services, and he just said, it was, he was doing consulting and financial services and property.

And he was like, I just can't get over how slow to adopt the tech. These larger companies are, or any of this entire industry is, he said, some of the stuff that comes out is, he said, like people, they applaud this new innovative thing. He said, and I'm looking, going, that thing is 10 years old.

Like we would, we've been doing that for ages. I remember specifically one lender when I was a broker. It was a big deal when I was a broker. I remember it was there was It would be halifax in the time had it was a long time ago now couldn't upload documents So you had to do some weird portal.

It was a big deal that they could now upload documents on the website I remember that specifically and so that's what I mean. Is that there's the slow Now obviously I know that there's people listen to this who don't have a clue what I mean about that they guys speak to people now and i'm like, do you not remember you had to have this like secondary little You Like other website, you'd have to log in with a pin and then upload the documents and then get a code and send it.

It was just a, and that was cutting edge then. So when you look at what you do now, I think that what you're with this AI movement, everything has is just changing at kind of breakneck speed. So that's another question I'd love to ask you with that is how has the, how long has Empowered been around for?

That's the first question I would probably ask. Yeah, so give me pre context before I go into the question So we've got a parent company, which is mcube. Yeah, we Is the part of the company that really drive the technology change? Empowered as a mortgage lender Never much luck with timing i'll give empowered so they launched during a pandemic They launched during a pandemic They started off as buy to let, specialist buy to let, because it's not necessarily very easy as a lender to go out and get your residential commissions from the regulator.

You have to show that you can operate a regulated business before you can be a regulated business. So we started out as a specialist buy to let company back when I first started with Empowered. And then it was almost actually we're probably talking two years ago now that we went into the residential space.

which I think was probably around the time when rates were starting to look like there could be an issue. We're looking on the verge of a recession. Inflation was growing. So again, every time we seem to jump into it was quite exciting. There was that would have been around the time when the rates were going up every Four weeks, wasn't it?

It was like a boom, as in like the base rate was just, and again, like I have time hops come up on my Instagram and stuff and it'll go, and it's from people going, yeah, their interest rate has now just increased from like 0. 5 percent to one. Yeah. And I think, gosh, wow.

Like that was, that's the world. It was at that point. It was so we first entered a market in cost sorry, in In a pandemic and then we jumped into residential during a cost of living crisis, we probably had every challenge that we could not even foresee in front of it. But if I look back at how far we've come in the last two years, it's been really exciting.

But yeah, that gives you a good understanding. So the reason why I asked that question is, How has it been, from a, I know that tech and the way that it has evolved, considering that the break of, it seems like timing could have been very, it's been wrong in some ways, but also incredibly right in others for regards to this AI deep learning adoption into society only really happened November 2022, when AI when ChachiPT was announced.

So how have you seen that? Change or have you seen any change of adoption of people, maybe understanding it more understanding a little bit about what you guys, the way your systems operate, because previous to that, I can, the only reason I said that is I can feel a little bit like I was doing zoom calls before the pandemic.

And it was like, it'd be like pulling teeth to get someone to attend a zoom call host pandemic, everybody like now like I don't, I only do zoom calls. So is there a similar thing for you guys where you obviously were, you're a technology company who's then got into lending. The stars aligned of like the world started to understand more about how the tech would work or was that, has that not really had any impact?

Yeah, absolutely. I think you're a hundred percent right in that's. Awareness of AI and how it works has probably helped people understand how Empower is achieving some of what we're setting out to achieve from a processing perspective. And I think it's removed maybe some of that fear element as well.

If we go back pre cry pre chat GPT. We have probably people thinking of Skynet at the turbo date. So if you go back to the 80, so yeah, I really bring his home to me. And I even saw this when it wasn't even AI. So I've worked in FinTech probably since around 2018 is when I moved away from managing and being face to face with advice.

And I moved into FinTech and I worked for a company. I won't necessarily name names because there's lots of different companies that do these types of tools. But I worked at one that provided criteria search facilities. So people could go and say, I've got this particular scenario, who are the lenders that are going to do this?

And I was sat doing a round table at some event, and someone sat in front of me and went, you're trying to get me out of a job. And my response to that was, In what way? If you think that your job is around searching criteria, Then probably you're not living the full part of your role.

I used to speak to customers that would be confused of whether to choose a two year mortgage or a five year fixed rate mortgage. It's not about saying that person would do it. It's about saying is that person who will do it? The right lender, considering all the other ones that do that.

And I'm based on what information that you've got in front of you. And again, it was having that conversation with the moments that we had at the start is around actually use this as a tool to see if you've got solutions for your customer, but spend your time, not wringing around lenders, being sat on hold, scouring lending policy and criteria, web pages, have good conversations, and then use that as a tool to support your job.

And I think people are seeing that more and more with AI now is. It works collaboratively with you. It helps you do your job more efficiently. And in some cases, I think it certainly helps me do a better job when I'm doing things, it enhances what you do. It's not a challenge to what you do.

Yeah. I completely agree with that. AI is, we were talking about this, the show, this show will be edited via AI. I use AI in everything I do all the time and it is, and it's never been it's never taken stuff. It just allows me as a marketer, it allows me to make more content in, in, it allows me what I'd say is make more content in more accessible ways.

That's what I would say, so stuff that you always would have wanted to do. And I think that's the same with mortgages. It allows you to do the things you want to do, but you never could have had the time to do them. And then all of a sudden, it's like that. I would like to turn this into a blog, but now I can't.

But I couldn't put two hours to read through, write all that. And so now you can, and I think it's a, as you said, it's the same with mortgages, you, the amount of mortgage brokers who I speak to who are successful, who are just, they are time poor. They don't have enough time to do the stuff and AI can do that.

It can absolutely. And then they say, Oh, I'll lose my administrator. You won't because you need a customer services person because it can't do that. So there's, it's the roles are changing, but it's removing the busy work. So I don't think it's a negative thing at all, but I think it's interesting.

The perception of it. And I do think in the, in our industry, I'm going off tangent now, but I do think on our industry, yeah, I do think in our industry, you're going to have a weird kind of, I know only from my own experience within the social media marketing of this, in this industry is that for every one person who was wanting to, it was like really like on board and ready to adopt, there were two others who were like, No, because they were like more fearful and it's changed and it's changing.

I've been doing this, be making content for seven years now in overall in regards to doing that, but it took a long time to get people to see that it's not it's not the worst thing in the world. It's still, it's they see it as change and that all change is bad. And actually change is not bad.

I was always, again, this might just be perception, but I always thought there would be a, almost a generational gap. I think you'd have new people, current industry who this is the norm within the world that they operate in and would be really quick adopters. Yeah. And then I felt that I would have some people that would approach it as it, no don't like change.

I'm just going to do what I've always done. And what I was so surprised at, in fact, it was the reason you and me started having conversations. is I did a I did a webinar on how you could use chat GPT in order to do some of the heavy lifting of your marketing within mortgages. And I did the webinar, I think still on YouTube.

It is. Yeah. We'll link it in here as well. We'll link it on this for people to get it. It's a brilliant, it's a brilliant webinar. I said, that's the reason me and you spoke was because I was, I snuck in under an email address from a client of mine, cause they were like, there's this webinar on chat GPT and I was like.

Yeah, get me in because I think you need to have FCA numbers. I was like, I'll be in. And then I watched the whole thing and I was just trying to hide quietly in the background to say, what is this guy saying? And I think I messaged, I emailed you cause you put your email up and I emailed you like minutes after the thing being like, just watch this.

We need to speak. Oh, you did this live. Yeah. But I think, firstly, I want to, everything I do, I'd rather do live, I feel it's more genuine anyway. I wanted to be able to react to people in real time on there. But when I did that webinar. Other than your email that I got back, I got one back quite quickly from somebody who said, I'm still a mortgage broker.

I'm literally just about to turn 70. Fine. Typically, this stuff very overwhelming, but he's it looks so easy and I'm actually really excited to give it a try. Now. I don't think this is down to me. It's down to actually how easy these tools are to use. So I was actually firstly surprised that.

Someone from a later generation is actually jumping on it and watching this stuff and showing an interest, but then he's a hundred percent, I'm getting behind it and I'm going to use it. So I thought that was just, that was brilliant. I think no, do you know that? I think, yeah.

So I've always found from the perceptions of it is that. And I've thought, like you said originally, I thought there's going to be a younger generation, especially with what I did, I was like, there's going to be a younger generation of people who are going to be, they're going to be my clients.

I'm in like my mid thirties. I was like, so they're going to be in their like twenties and they're going to want this and they're going to, and then everybody else is going to just not be that interested in it. And my family are all from the industry. My dad was in the industry. Dad was in compliance and training, sister or brother in law, all this stuff, they're all in it.

And I thought they wouldn't care. And they, no one really was that at the beginning. Now though, I'm so proven wrong by that. The majority of my clients are in their kind of late, say late forties, they're in their like fifties and sixties. A lot of them, some of them are younger, but I've got non who are below the age of like mid thirties.

I don't think not really any because. The people who are, which the reason why I say mid thirties, people always go, that's still young. I'm like, it's not about young. It's about pre social media and post social media era. It's that pre tech era. Like I grew up where social media wasn't a thing and it became a thing as I was in my later kind of teenage years.

So I didn't grow up using it. My wife is five years younger than me and she did. And there's a very different stark difference in the way that we saw it. Very similar to how you said you were like, I'm on there, but I'm not on all those other, that's exactly me. And so I, and that's probably anyone who's in the kind of mid thirties or up.

And I'd say that what was really interesting with that though, is I was so wrong again, is that the amount of people who actually wanted to learn We're older and but what they also did is they came at it better than the younger people because the younger people, this is going to sound really strange, but the younger people had been warped by what had been given out as like entertainment.

They hadn't got the business acumen to understand how it could be used for business. They saw it as an entertainer. They saw it like Logan Paul and all these other things they could do. So they were the ones who were dancing on Tik TOK and doing all these funny things, but they weren't converting the ones who did well.

Like that 70 year old broker, he would be the type of person who's I always used to say it's visibility is more important than ability is idea that the more visible you are, people will use you more because you're visible than you are within how good you are. What I found was that is true, but if you have the ability to, you become an absolute weapon because if you've got that, because you can't.

Can't fast track experience. And I think that's where I see with the stuff that you guys create empowered with the service you provide and also the added tools and extra things you have, which we'll touch on in a bit, but it's like in a minute, but it's like when that is put in the hands of people who already know the job, then it becomes amazing because as you say, then they can do the job and put their time into doing the, delivering the best outcome for the client.

It's an interesting thing. Which is evidence. What you said is there to facilitate, not replace. Yes, absolutely. And I always say to people, they go, it might, it's going to replace them. Will it replace you in the end? Most likely, but you'll probably be long retired before that ever really becomes a thing.

So I wouldn't worry too much about that. There'll be inevitable point, but I think we're a long long long way away from any of that. So it's and so it's that thing of, cause that's what people ask. Then they say about AI and I'll go, but it will take my job.

And I'm like, I will make as much money as I can from it before it takes my job. That's the way, that's the way you have to look at it is, can you make as much as you can from it? So that you don't even need to worry about it. And that is what people, because otherwise you could sit and go, I'm not going to use it.

And everyone else is using it, but change doesn't happen overnight. It'd be an evolution. So when it does take over jobs, it's probably jobs that people aren't actually looking to do. And there'll be different things that people are spending their time on. Yeah. You're, that's actually a really good point.

It's true. They'll, the jobs slowly move and the new jobs will come in. So I alluded to a bit about the idea of you guys have some Incredible tools, actually, I've been lucky enough to jump on some calls and with some of the people in your team, and they showed me the stuff you work on and they are going to come on the show.

We've got that. We're going to have them on the show to do a full breakdown of that. So we won't dive. We'll dive a little bit into just what it A little bit of overview of kind of the stuff you guys offer, but we are going to have two of them come on the show and do a deep dive into it for us.

But yeah, talk me through some of the kind of tools that you guys have been working on in the background. You know what, that, that's going to be, that's going to be some exciting shows there because I'm looking forward to them. Absolutely. One thing I love about working at Empowered is the culture, it's quite an electrifying energy that you've got there.

You've got so many. Talented people, but who are passionate about driving change.  Of the guys that you'll probably have on Ross, he's risk. When have you ever known someone in risk? So excited about getting on podcasts and talking about AI and tech and how he was a hot, when we had that chat, I said to him afterwards, I was like, I was such blown away.

It was breath of fresh air of risk. And like the way he approached it, which I'm so excited for him to come on the show to talk about that because it's. The way he approached it was, it made me excited and it's risk , and I was like, yeah, that's great. That's it. He was, it was really bizarre how infectiously enthusiastic his approach to the forward thinking approach that risk is normally so not, it was really impressive.

Yeah. And it is that we've got such like a fast paced dynamic culture that I was talking about, and this is real pervasive attitude of, we can do this better. Let's take something. It doesn't matter what it is. Can we do it better? Is it within our gift to give? And when we start talking about some of the other things that we get involved in, you could quite easily sit there and say how does that benefit you as a lender?

And a lot of times the answer is it doesn't, but  benefits the intermediaries, it benefits the industry, and actually I work with people who do this stuff in their spare time because they think it's fun. So Stelios, who you'll get on the show, who works with all the AI that we have, we may as well start there, because again, it tied in quite nicely with the conversation we had about how we met.

Because it also created this new tool that's on our website. So I was doing that, that, that webinar Stelios also joined the webinar and he was sat there listening to me talk about prompts and directions for the AI in order for it to try and get. You, what you want is the end result and things to look out for Americanisms and some of the spelling and the way you can approach it.

And he just thought to himself, I could probably build something that'll do all of that and you don't have to watch Matt's web at all. Follow all these rules. Although it's still quite simple to follow the rules, he just thought let's create something that will do all that. It will be focused on the intermediary market.

So we built some something called marketing assist. Sits on the website. It's available for everybody. You don't have to be doing a mortgage with us. It's just, it's there. It's available. And what that will do is allow someone to use that technology. So when we're talking about, ChatGPT or Claude.

We take all those tools, we bring them into Marketing Assist, we give it the focus on the mortgage industry. We provide really good, I think, UI UX for the prompts that are on there. And the user can literally sit there and say, as you said before, I've got more things to do than time to do them. I need to prioritize something's got to give, but I want to get my marketing message out.

I want to get my brand awareness out there. And that could be via a blog, a social post. It could be, an intriguing email that you want to send. You can literally let it know what the topic is. who the audience are, your key messages. Do you want it to be funny? Do you want it to be serious? Do you want it to be intriguing?

You can do a drop down, pick the direction and use that AI to generate that content for you. Now, one thing I would always still suggest That I did on the webinar and that I would with anybody using this marketing assist tool is firstly, number one, put some of your own experiences in there, some of your own personality.

It's great. It will match a lot of, I don't take a lot of things too seriously. So I like the humorous angle that you can get from using A. I. And I'm, I think I said on the webinar, I was blown away that it was actually using some of the word patterns that I used just as me as an individual, and they didn't know to learn that, it just it just felt right.

But if I've got some things that, that kind of key experiences or something personal that I can add into that content, it allows you just to elevate it but it's done most of the heavy lifting, as you said before, so that job that might be an hour, It's not four or five minutes. And you've got that blog on your website, or you've got that mail shot going out to your customers.

And this is where Rasa from a risk perspective got involved, because if you're an AR, you still have to get these promotions signed off through your internal channels with with the firm that you're with, or if you're a DA, you'll still probably use the club or some compliance options that you have to come and check these promotions.

So the next thing, and probably it's going to be on there by the time you play this. It will be, it'll be on there. We probably, by the time we play this, I actually will say this now, but most likely to be if by the time for this, if you haven't already, you'll go to my YouTube channel and there will be, there should be at this point, a load of playlists, there should be a playlist with a load of videos talking how to use it.

Cause that's the stuff that we were in the call. We were all talking about doing. So we'll make sure they're linked here, but if you'll go, it should be on my YouTube channel. Cause this is so good that that I'm going to do a series of it. And that's why the boys are coming on to talk about it.

Cause it is such an interesting, it's such a unique tool. Yeah, so clever, and so effective, and Rasa looked at it and went what we could do is we could start pulling mCOBS into this. So I'm going to stress right now, we're not regulated. It's not a regulated tools. There's still the channels that you had before for signups, but actually hopefully it should mean that the amount of feedback or change you might need to make should start to reduce, if not disappear, because it's going to bring that content in and give it a regulated lens content.

Yeah, we build stuff like that, which is cool. I got a call literally Thursday, just before Easter. I think it was right towards the end of the day. So Stuart, who's our CEO rang me and he went we're building an app. Yeah, we're going to build an app. I don't think there's any apps out there that are intermediary focus.

So what we want it to do is if someone's a broker administrator that can download our app and when the offers issued, there's a notification on your phone, Oh, by the way, offers issued, or if the underwriter has a question, it's popped up on your phone and you go, Oh, I can answer that on my phone really easy.

Or surveys instructed or surveys back, you've got your timeline. So he just wanted to be able to yeah, I say him because again, a lot of stuff's driven by Stuart. Yeah. It was his his view and his goal a lot of this. And he just said, let's give people as much control and awareness of what's happening with their cases as possible.

And, there's not a single person I know that hasn't picked up their phone, at least once in an hour. And that we haven't. So it's about just giving those again, extra tools. I don't think I could be wrong, but I don't think there's any other lender that has an intermediary. apps this will be might be out by the time this airs but it's going to be on the apple store it'll be out for android so it literally could be friday yet we're building this we've already got a lot of it mocked up we're just waiting on apple to to check the extra t's and c's i think it's regulated business it's financial services there needs to be a bit more due diligence He's get on with the guy in Devaguy called Paul, really talented guy and take a look at it.

And he's what we'll do is we'll get it on your phone so you can stop showing people. And I'm talking, that's the pace of change. So it was told about it on a Thursday. We've got the bank holiday. I'm seeing it on the Monday and with any luck, I'll have it on my phone by the end of this week, with any luck, depending on Apple and that's the speed.

Case, but that's because you, that's the thing that's so interesting about Your company and the company that you work for is that, that you have the resources and the right, you have the right resources in regards to the right minds, the right building block. Every it's like a melting pot of the right type of people in the right place.

So these things that are very hard for most people to do, you can just action them. It's just there. You have that innovation to be able to do it. Yeah. We own our own tech. So everything we've got has been built by the team of guys that mostly sit in leads. Which is good fun. It's like bringing your dog to work day every day.

There's at least three dogs everywhere at a particular time by these guys. So anything in house we build also, and we do have a slight advantage coming into the market when we did is we don't have legacy issues. So some of the other lenders out there, they're going to have to take into account any decision they made, 10, 15 years ago.

With how they collect data, how their processing's in place. I'm not criticizing other parts of the industry saying, oh, look, we've innovated and you never did. No, we, we a have the advantage of starting a really exciting time from a technology perspective. We don't carry any of that legacy with us.

And we happen to, to scoop up a lot of talented people to work for us. No, I love it. I love it. Mate. We've been talking for ages. I've just been looking at this and thinking, wow, we got to wrap it up. I love it. I didn't even tell you my title. Yeah, literally. Like we haven't actually said anything about what you do about me.

Cause I know you said you wanted to, yeah. So we'll tell us a bit about, yeah. So tell us a bit about you. As in your background, because we talked, this is what's great. Talk about that, but talk about so you're the sales director now for empowered. Yep. That's correct. So what did you, what's your kind of your background in the industry?

And I know you've alluded to it in little bits here, but just talk about your kind of journey through it. So that people can understand context of how you ended up getting to Yeah, and I'll do the whistle stop version just because I'm really conscious of time. So yeah, my job currently is sales director.

I'm responsible for overseeing all the distribution channels, all the intermediate relationships all of that. And the strategic sales strategy all sits with me which seems quite a lot of responsibility. Seems an awful lot of responsibility. It's quite a bit. Okay. Okay. All right. But where I started, so I started in 2003 as a mortgage broker.

So I, I just finished university, did a degree in law. And the one thing I wanted to keep from that is, or take from that was the fact that I did not want to work as a solicitor. So I thought to myself, what shall I do? What jobs are out there? And randomly, whilst I didn't realize this for a long time after, but it dawned on me many years later that, Even like during my work experience at school, so I'm going back to the 90s here.

I went and sat and did my work experience with Black Horse Financial and sat with all the mortgage brokers. Oh, wow. So you were like, it's been incepted, it's been incepted into me. So I saw a job advertised as a trainee mortgage broker and I jumped at that. And I really enjoyed it. And I was a mortgage broker for a lot of my career.

I'd been a BDM. I got scooped up at one point by Lloyds bank to go and be a financial advisor there for several years. And I then went into management training. So I used to do a lot of the TNC management training for mortgage brokers. I was a sales manager for a while as well. And then an opportunity arose to work in FinTech.

And as someone Who's always enjoyed learning new things and learn new technology. It seemed to be a really great step to actually start helping people with the technology that I'd used in my career. So I did several years working at a FinTech company. And when the opportunity Empowered came up, it just seemed to be a perfect synergy between, giving financial advice, working as FinTech experience.

In an environment that's actually, it is paving the way with a lot of new technology and I just dived at it. And I worked as a key account manager slash bdm for several years with with Empowered. And then we managing director took an opportunity, a really exciting opportunity over at HSBC and.

Yeah the, it just felt that they wanted me to come and do this role. I absolutely jumped at the chance. I love working here. I love what we're trying to achieve and having more input in that is just even better for me. I love that. I love it. It's really interesting. The reason why I want people to know that is because me and you spoke about your previously over different calls about your background, but I think it's important for But brokers to know, like you've been in the trenches and know this, it's not coming from a point of Oh yeah you've worked within banking and as in like on the intermediary side, you actually have also been in the business and you've gone through it all.

And and that, I think that's why, that's what for me rings true about how we first, I noticed that on your call, on your like webinar. And then as we've spoken and got to know each other, like over the recent calls and stuff, it's That you understand who you're creating and who your actual client is.

And I think that's really important that many people don't. Yeah. I've seen all sorts of environments. I worked through the credit crunch, I was a broker during dual pricing. So really key to me with what we do. And I'm very privileged to have a lot of talented people working for me in my team.

If we went through that period of, dual pricing and even lenders trying to retain customers on product transfers and then power came into this, and this was one of the things that really excited me about the opportunity to work here. It's in support in the intermediary. So it's not just about giving them extra tools.

It was about actually let's make sure that we're putting these people first. If it's a PT we encourage people to go back. to their broker. We don't try and retain that customer. Yeah. We put a lot of adverts on the London Underground recently. So it was, we'll pass it all over to TFL with Empower.

And there wasn't a phone number for Empower, but I went, go speak to your mortgage broker. I love that. No. So we want to do, we want to be the best lender that supports the intermediary community because they're the ones giving the best advice. And I truly think people should be seeing intermediaries before dealing with lenders and that should always be the life cycle of their experience.

I love that. Matthew, mate, if people want to connect with you, they want to learn more about you, where's best place for them to go? It's certainly not Facebook or Instagram. Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. People can add me there. Yeah, I do still try and be feet on the ground. So I'm going to be at different conferences and events that take place.

I'll even, if the phones are busy I'll jump on and I'll be taking calls. I'm sure if people. Have some deans with empowered at some point, or most likely have a conversation with me. And I'm really open for the thoughts, suggestions, comments, feedback, anyone can reach out to me and LinkedIn, I suppose is the easiest place because it's accessible for everyone.

I love it, mate. It's been a real pleasure and I can't wait to see obviously we're going to be doing more stuff together with the team and stuff. So I can't wait to just see how it evolves. I love it. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks Ash. Cheers buddy. Bye bye.