Expert: Faraz Ahmad, Associate Partner and Senior Solution Leader, McKinsey Facilitator: Ben MacGregor, Director, Savanta
Headlines:
- Housing ecosystem is a £5.2 trillion opportunity beyond mortgages
- Being able to recognise where you are in the ecosystem is essential
- Education often not identified or talked about in the ecosystem.
Discussion points:
Delegates discussed how it is better to partner rather than attempt to do everything because then nothing will get done properly.
Another pointed out was to ensure the businesses you are partnering with aren’t competing because that can cause issues.
Having looked at the presentation, and discussed the ecosystem, a couple of delegates pointed out that education always seemed to get overlooked and that could be a good area to ‘play in’
The broker may not have enough bandwidth to cross-sell all potential offerings and often concentrate on a small number.
Delegates noted, that tying in with the point around recognising where you fit into the ecosystem, that brokers are being pushed more and more into beefing up their offerings but actually that can be detrimental.
It’s impossible to cross-sell every potential service a client might need – better to concentrate on perhaps two or three additional offerings to specialise in. Insurance for example.
Reputation is key in this market so brokers can, rightly, be careful of signing up with new partners.
‘Will they offer the same quality of service that I do? Delegates noted that regularly a weak link in the chain is the conveyancing which can be of a low quality. Others mentioned that often there simply aren’t enough partners to work with – e.g. plumbers.
If the customer experience is bad with the partner, it will be blamed on the broker who made the connection.
Consumer Duty – could offering the right cross-sell options evidence that they are providing value for their customers. Delegates weren’t sure but would be interesting to clarify.
Key takeaways:
- Looking to partner with plumbers, or maintenance firms or furnishers can have significant upside in terms of revenue.
- What is critical is to find the right partners to work with for your offering
