A BROKERAGE has grown from two advisers working in Norwich to a nationwide business with more than 90 mortgage advisers – all without outside investment, huge advertising budgets or setting individual sales targets for its advisers.
Yellow Brick Mortgages was founded by Stephen Perkins and Greg Marcham in March 2018 after the pair became frustrated with the target-driven culture they had experienced during their careers in corporate financial services.
Rather than setting out to become one of Britain’s biggest mortgage brokers, Perkins says the ambition was to create a company people trusted and allow growth to follow naturally.
Today, Yellow Brick Mortgages has advisers working across the UK, from Cornwall to Newcastle and Wales, while remaining independently owned and growing organically.
Stephen Perkins, Managing Director at Norwich-headquartered Yellow Brick Mortgages, said: “We haven’t built Yellow Brick Mortgages by trying to be the biggest mortgage broker. We’ve built it by trying to be the most trusted.
“I think the most important factor is being proud of who you are and what you do. If you’re that, people will follow and you will generally be successful because you’re making decisions that are right for your customers and your team, rather than simply because they’ll add a few pounds to the bottom line.”
The philosophy has produced significant numbers. Yellow Brick Mortgages now has more than 90 advisers and a team of around 110 people. In 2025, it completed 4,498 mortgages representing £887 million of lending, while turnover has grown from around £300,000 in its first year to £6.29 million.
That focus on trust has also brought wider recognition. Yellow Brick Mortgages holds a 5.0 rating on Trustpilot from 7,140 reviews, of which 7,134 are five-star – and it is the Official Mortgage Partner of Norwich City Football Club.
Perkins said the company could have expanded considerably faster by taking outside investment and spending heavily to acquire customers, but deliberately chose another route.
Even today, Yellow Brick Mortgages spends only a nominal amount on paid Google advertising, largely to protect searches for its own brand and promote selected specialist services. He questioned whether faster, heavily funded expansion would have produced the same culture, service standards or sustainable profitability.
Instead, growth has largely come through recommendations, estate-agent relationships and experienced brokers joining the firm.
Ethos
Perkins said: “Every bit of growth and development has been through reinvestment of the profits and being careful what we spend and growing organically.
“The key thing for us is the ethos. That’s what allowed us to grow just by caring about customer service and giving back. They’re the two things we talk about above all others.”
Perhaps the most unusual feature of the model is that its advisers do not have individual sales or volume targets, despite the company providing substantial lead opportunities.
It is a deliberate departure from Marcham’s previous experience. He recalled joining a large corporate financial services business as a broker in 2002 and discovering, just two weeks into the job, that a colleague who had started on the same day had already left after struggling against targets.
He says heavily target-driven environments can wear people down and risk creating pressure to put internal numbers ahead of customers.
Yellow Brick Mortgages still examines performance where necessary, including whether it is delivering properly for introducers, but Marcham said advisers are ultimately trusted to do their jobs rather than being micromanaged.
He said: “You don’t need a target. What you need is people that want to do the job well and want support if they need it.”
That approach also shapes the customer journey. Rather than moving a borrower between different departments, the adviser remains their main point of contact throughout the mortgage and wider home-buying process, helping with questions and problems through to completion, while the company’s administrative infrastructure supports them behind the scenes.
Perkins said: “If you read our customer reviews, people rarely talk about the mortgage rate we found them. They talk about the support they received, having someone there to answer their questions and being guided through what can be one of the most stressful transactions of their lives.
“Finding the right mortgage is obviously important, but the service around it is where a huge amount of the value lies.”
Technology
Technology has helped Yellow Brick Mortgages scale the model nationally.
As the business grew, Yellow Brick Mortgages also developed its own technology to manage adviser availability, distribute leads and give introducers live visibility of their referrals, while deliberately keeping technology behind the adviser rather than between the adviser and client.
Covid proved an unexpected catalyst. Before the pandemic, the firm had around 22 advisers and was predominantly focused on Norfolk because mortgage meetings were largely conducted face-to-face.
Once Zoom and other video platforms became normal, Yellow Brick Mortgages realised neither its advisers nor its customers needed to be in Norwich. It subsequently doubled from around 22 to 44 advisers as it expanded geographically.
Perkins said: “It was definitely a catalyst for our growth because we adapted to it and embraced it. We thought, now we can recruit people anywhere, we can have referrals from anywhere and we can expand.”
Being relatively small at the time also meant decisions could be taken quickly rather than passing through layers of management.
Growth has not been completely straightforward. Perkins said there have been periods when Yellow Brick Mortgages had too many leads for its advisers and other times when the underlying infrastructure became strained trying to keep pace with the growth, leaving the founders working extremely long hours merely to keep everything running.
They spent around a year building the support teams and systems needed to enable the next stage of expansion.
The company’s emphasis on trust also extends beyond mortgages.
Community
Yellow Brick Mortgages donates to charity when a mortgage completes, with customers choosing which of the company’s three charity partners receives the money.
Perkins said the company has donated more than £240,000 to charitable causes since launch, with its regular contributions increasing year on year and now exceeding £45,000 annually.
It also plants a tree for every completed mortgage. The scheme was introduced a few years after launch, but the company retrospectively paid for trees to cover thousands of customers it had already helped, taking the total beyond 21,000.
Mortgage advice has also been fee-free for NHS employees since the company’s first day, potentially saving a customer £695, and Perkins said the company has no intention of ever withdrawing the offer.
Grassroots sport is another focus. The policy partly stems from an experience before Yellow Brick Mortgages existed, when a request for £500 to sponsor Marcham’s son’s football team was eventually rejected despite his then-employer having recently announced substantial profits.
The experience helped shape Yellow Brick Mortgages’ decision to direct marketing money towards community teams. It has since supported football, rugby and cricket as well as sports including cheerleading, dodgeball, darts and cycling.
The underlying principle is that doing something worthwhile for customers, advisers and communities does not have to conflict with running a successful company.
Perkins said: “We believe if you do the right things, then the profit and the growth come naturally.
“If you set the business up with the right mindset and ethos from the get-go, whether it’s for the adviser, the introducer or the client, and you’re giving people what they need and delivering more than they expect, ultimately the profits look after themselves.”
