FOR many entrepreneurs, success means hiring more staff, opening new offices and relentlessly chasing growth – but mortgage adviser Michelle Lawson has deliberately taken a different path.
After more than a decade running Fareham-based Lawson Financial, Michelle has resisted the temptation to build a large brokerage, instead keeping the business to a two-person operation with her husband Dan.
It is a decision rooted partly in the way she wants to work, but also in a belief that mortgage advice is becoming increasingly complicated and clients still value having somebody who understands their individual circumstances.
Michelle established the business in 2014, with Dan joining a year later to handle administration as the workload increased. Despite having the opportunity to expand further, she has chosen not to.
She said: “We’ve not wanted to expand. It’s just Dan and I. Dan does the admin and I do the advice. I don’t really want to grow it. If anything, I’m looking to expand further into the specialist arena”
Michelle’s route into mortgages began years earlier and was partly inspired by her own experience as a borrower.
She previously worked in the travel industry, but after having her daughter in 2001 found her employer was unable to accommodate the hours she needed when she wanted to return to work.
Looking for a different direction, Michelle studied for her Certificate in Mortgage Advice and Practice before moving into the industry.
Her own early experiences of getting a mortgage also influenced the type of adviser she wanted to become.
Michelle and her husband went into Abbey National for their first mortgage and were bombarded with information they struggled to understand.
Complicated
She said: “We both walked out and we were like, ‘Did you get any of that?’ Actually, no, we didn’t understand it. I guess probably what we get a lot of feedback from now is that we do explain things in plain language. We do keep it simple.
“I want to make sure that people understand what they’re doing because we didn’t.”
That philosophy remains central to Lawson Financial more than 20 years after Michelle entered the mortgage industry.
Rather than relying heavily on acronyms and industry terminology, she tries to explain products and processes in language borrowers can understand, even writing “loan to value” rather than simply using “LTV” when communicating with clients.
But Michelle believes mortgages themselves have inevitably become more complicated.
Borrowers increasingly have multiple income streams, different employment arrangements and more complex financial lives, while lenders have developed products and criteria designed to accommodate them.
She said: “As the world’s grown and people’s situations have changed, it’s become naturally more complicated because people have got more complex.
“If anything, probably as an industry, we’ve actually contributed to this. By trying to accommodate everybody, we’ve made what was simple more intricate.”
Even after more than two decades in the industry, Michelle says she continues to encounter situations she has not seen before.
That complexity is one reason she believes mortgage advice should amount to far more than simply finding the lowest advertised interest rate.
Lawson Financial sends clients information at each stage of their mortgage, explaining what has happened and what they need to do next. It has also introduced an app and Michelle has created guidance videos designed to help borrowers understand different parts of the process.
Advice
She said: “It’s not just about us finding the best rate. It’s about knowing the process inside and out and being able to spot a problem before it’s a problem, or knowing how to resolve it when push comes to shove.
“We can steer people to make sure they’re asking the right questions of the agent, that they’re doing the right things at the right time and making the right decisions.”
One client, for example, had been preparing to port their mortgage when Michelle discovered they did not realise porting involved making a new mortgage application.
Another case involved borrowers who had been placed onto a fixed-rate mortgage despite planning to move.
They potentially faced around £9,000 in penalties, but Michelle helped challenge the situation and the lender ultimately waived the charges after evidence showed the borrowers had previously explained their intention to move.
She believes such cases illustrate the danger of viewing mortgages as a commodity where the cheapest headline rate must automatically be the best option.
Products with lower rates can carry substantial fees, while a fixed-rate period that suits one borrower may be completely inappropriate for somebody else.
Michelle recently spoke to clients initially considering a five-year fix, for example, but discussions about their children and the possibility of moving for school led them to conclude a three-year deal better fitted their plans.
She said: “Unless your friends are carbon copies of you, then you can’t do the same because your thoughts, your background and your future are all going to be completely different.
“Just because Jonny down the pub’s got a two-year fix, it doesn’t mean that a two-year fix is going to be right for you as an individual.”
Penalties
Fees are another area where Michelle believes borrowers can become too focused on the headline number.
Some lenders offer lower rates accompanied by higher product fees, which can potentially be added to the mortgage and accrue interest themselves.
She said: “People are conditioned now to go for the cheapest, which isn’t always best. Everything’s got a purpose of sorts, but it’s finding the right thing for the purpose.”
Technology could make that distinction even more important.
Michelle expects straightforward mortgage cases to become increasingly automated as lenders develop their apps and artificial intelligence capabilities.
Rather than trying to compete by building a bigger operation focused on volume, she sees an opportunity for Lawson Financial to move further towards cases where borrowers need more specialist knowledge and human intervention.
That could include people with adverse credit, buy-to-let borrowers, semi-commercial mortgages and bridging finance, alongside customers whose income, employment or personal circumstances make their application less straightforward.
She said: “There’s still a huge place for advice. There’s so many different complexities now that most people do fall into the complex category.”
And that helps explain why, after more than a decade in business, Michelle has no desire to build Lawson Financial into a sprawling brokerage.
For her, remaining small allows the firm to concentrate on what she believes clients actually need. That’s personal advice, clear explanations and someone who understands the mortgage process well enough to know when the apparently simplest or cheapest answer might not be the right one.
