Growing a mortgage business safely and efficiently

Pepper Advantage teamed with Metro Bank to manage its rapidly expanding mortgage initiative. Pepper Advantage’s ringfenced white-label teams looked after the brand and migrated Metro Bank’s large, complex portfolio, driving business growth.

About Metro Bank

Launching in 2010, Metro was the first bank introduced onto the UK high street in more than 150 years. Since then, it has grown into a network of 76 stores, with 2.5 million customer accounts, and more than £12bn in loans and advances.  

Metro Bank does banking differently; as it believes ‘people come first, and everyone deserves a great experience every step of the way’. Metro Bank is celebrated for its exceptional customer experience. It is the highest rated high street bank for overall service quality and best bank for service in-store for personal and business customers, in the Competition and Market Authority’s Service Quality Survey in February 2022. It was recognised as ‘Bank of the Year’ at the 2020, MoneyAge Awards and ‘Banking Brand of The Year’ at the Moneynet Personal Finance Awards 2021 and named Bank Mortgage Provider of the Year at the Mortgage Awards 2022.

Metro Bank sees itself as the people’s bank and each colleague is charged with creating FANs not just customers. Consequently, it has a strong focus on customer service, and makes sure everyone receives the same level of exceptional service. The community bank offers retail, business, commercial and private banking services and prides itself on giving customers the choice to bank however, whenever and wherever they choose. Whether that’s through its network of stores open seven days a week, 362 days a year; on the phone through its UK-based contact centres; or online through its internet banking or award-winning mobile app: the bank offers customers real choice. 

Metro Bank was looking to expand its mortgage offer considerably and needed a partner it could trust with its unique brand credentials and tone of voice, as well as its customer-centric approach.

Pepper Advantage has been able to supply Metro Bank with like-minded, agile servicing teams, as well as give it access to the latest data and analytics technology and service platforms to better manage its rapidly expanding mortgage initiative. 

Mortgage lenders of all sizes are now subject to greater regulatory oversight, which requires them to have sophisticated systems and processes in place. A partnership with Pepper Advantage provides instant access to those functions, which is what Metro Bank needed.

Enhancing the pace of growth

Pepper Advantage was selected after an extensive RFI (request for information) and RFP (request for proposal) process to provide the platform and services required to enable it to achieve its ambitious mortgage offer.

We were tasked with developing systems and processes to provide a ringfenced white-label service to newly completed Metro Bank mortgage customers. At the same time, we were asked to migrate Metro Bank’s existing back book of loans onto the Pepper Advantage system – an enormous task.

The whole process took just six months, and we delivered the following:

• A successful migration of the back book of residential, buy-to-let and portfolio buy-to-let loans
• Commencement of the daily migration of all newly completed residential buy-to-let and portfolio buy-to-let loans onto the Pepper Advantage platform
  o   This required development of a daily data transfer process, preceding an API solution, between the DPR originations platform and the Pepper Advantage servicing systems, so that the day after completion Pepper Advantage’s team could start managing customer service
• Provision of a white-labelled service delivered by a dedicated, ringfenced team, enabling a seamless customer transition from the Metro Bank-owned originations process to the Pepper Advantage team
• Integrated telephony systems enabling customer calls to be transferred seamlessly between Metro Bank and Pepper Advantage, providing and uninterrupted customer-service provision

As a result of our partnership, Metro Bank has massively enhanced its pace of growth with product launches across new asset classes.

Fully integrated teams

Matthew Wye, Director of Lending Operations at Metro Bank, said: “We were looking for a partner who shared our unique mission in creating Fans through our mortgage proposition and a rigid, out-of-the-box proposition would simply not have worked for us.  Pepper Advantage was able to tailor a solution that met our high expectations which is no mean feat. A key reason this has been such a successful partnership is because Pepper Advantage and Metro Bank are synergistic when it comes to fanatical customer focus and organisational ethos. We both want customers to succeed in their financial journeys and when they face difficulties, support them sympathetically and appropriately. Ultimately we want to do things differently and help those often overlooked by incumbent institutions. Pepper Advantage’s agility and can-do approach was perfect match for us, supporting our vision and journey to becoming the UK’s best community bank.”