SPECIAL FEATURE: Why we’re telling consumers to speak to brokers

We’re putting our marketing money where our mouth is, with a nationwide advertising campaign – direct to consumers – promoting the benefits of seeking market advice from our intermediary partners.

Paul Lloyd (pictured) is marketing director at Virgin Money

We’re putting our marketing money where our mouth is, with a nationwide advertising campaign – direct to consumers – promoting the benefits of seeking market advice from our intermediary partners.

Why are we doing this? Well, for many lenders operating in the channel, the intermediary is seen as of secondary importance – a source of additional sales when the branch network can’t deliver the lending volume demanded by the business.

That’s not true of Virgin Money, where the intermediary channel is completely central to our business. Given this, what better way to demonstrate our commitment than by investing our direct marketing budget in promoting our intermediary partners?

Our experience in recent years tells us that consumers increasingly want market advice, but many aren’t quite sure where to get it. So that’s why we’ve also created the website findamortgagebroker.co.uk – a brand new service that provides consumers who want advice, but who don’t have a broker, with a convenient way to locate an intermediary and access the support they need. By doing this, we believe we can help support growth in the intermediary sector, channelling leads who otherwise would have stuck with the high-street lenders. We also believe it’s the best choice for many consumers who will benefit from impartial, market advice.

We hope that our campaign demonstrates just how serious we are about our support of the intermediary channel. And so the next time a bank or building society talks to you about being a valued partner, ask them whether they are prepared to invest their own money to help you build your business. Because if it really is a partnership, then that’s the least you should expect.