MFS 2023: Our Top 5 Highlights

What a year it’s been! One which presented challenges and opportunities for both MFS, and the wider market. In 2023, we’ve seen a fresh batch of major banking failures, escalation in global conflicts, and the end of Covid-19 being recognised as a global health emergency.

Closer to home in the UK, we’ve adapted to continued political instability, rising interest rates, and slowing inflation. Just like every year, 2023 presented pros and cons in equal measure.

Regardless of what was going on in the news however, MFS went from strength to strength this year. We’re proud of everything we’ve achieved in 2023, although a few notable successes stand out. As the year draws to a close, we thought we’d take a look back and share our thoughts on the achievements we’re most proud of.

1. New and improved products

There’s been plenty of newness this year. Bridging wise, we were proud to launch new variable rate bridging products in early 2023. We wanted to provide our borrowers with even more optionality in the face of a difficult market.

These variable rates provided additional flexibility alongside our fixed products and remain open to new and existing clients alike.

This followed on from the launch of a new range of lower rate BTL mortgages, which included special edition trackers with pay rates as low as 0.25% + BBR. This new range allowed brokers and their clients to choose their product fee depending on the borrower’s individual requirements, with flexibility to choose between a 2%, 4% or 6% fee, across all four tiers. This means borrowers can potentially benefit from lower interest rates, which can help with cashflow or generating larger loan sizes.

As our BTL team continued to deliver for residential landlords, we thought it was the right time to enter the commercial property world. Available initially to a set group of brokers, our new commercial products will allow borrowers to benefit from commercial term BTL finance at bridging speed, with loans delivered in as little as a week.

The pilot is ongoing, and we can’t wait to gather feedback from everyone involved so we can finely tune these products to the market’s needs.

In the face of multiple base rate hikes, we committed to freezing our bridging rates in mid-2023. What’s more, as the wider economy continued to pose a challenge, we extended this freeze to October.

We always aim to provide property investors with flexibility and optionality – regardless of what’s going on in the economy. This year, we like to believe we’ve delivered plenty of evidence to support that claim.

2. Numbers that go up

These efforts appear to be paying off. We’ve seen noticeable increases across several key measurements in 2023, with our marketing team having an especially busy year.

Deal enquiries across the whole business are up this year. Much of this success is the result of all the hard work our sales and marketing teams puts in day in, day out. Just a few examples: for our blogs alone, we’ve seen a whopping 373% increase in traffic. Meanwhile, we attended 21.5% more industry events in 2023 than we did last year.

These efforts require a lot of effort behind the scenes. Which is why we reached the milestone of hiring our 100^th employee this year. Also, we expanded with two key new roles – a head of national accounts, and a general counsel.

Across our business, whether it involves our underwriting processes, marketing efforts, or our headcount – we’re always pushing for growth. And we’re proud of how this growth is taking shape.

3. Celebrating diversity

This year has been focused on rewarding, and recognising our team’s hard work. We kicked off 2023 by making 16 internal promotions, and hiring across 11 new roles. But we also wanted to better understand the backgrounds of our staff, and see if we could set an example for the industry of diversity done right.

On this, we surveyed our staff in May to get a clearer picture of the backgrounds that make up, and contribute to MFS’ success. The results (at the time) showed that:

• 44% of MFS’ employees represent as female and 56% as male
• Just under two fifths (38%) of the MFS team describe themselves as English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British. A further 18% are Indian, with a wide range of other nationalities and ethnicities – from Chinese to Pakistani, Lithuanian to Polish – making up the remaining 44%
• Six different religions are followed across the MFS workforce: Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. Almost half (48%) say they are an atheist.
• Our employees speak more than 20 languages between them, including French, Latvian, Portuguese, Greek, Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Romanian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Farsi, Urdu, Gujarati, Marathi, and German. The majority (52%) of the MFS team speaks multiple languages.

Evidently, our commitment to creating an inclusive, welcoming place to work is recognised by the wider industry. At this year’s Women’s Recognition Awards, we were fortunate enough to walk away the winner of the Equality Employer of the Year award, adding to our growing collection of accolades.

4. Partnerships galore

Our success isn’t solely driven by our own efforts, however. This year, we’ve been fortunate enough to partner up with several organisations, and open up our services to a wider audience of brokers and borrowers. In 2023, we’ve joined the following companies’ lender panels:

• Finova Payment and Mortgage Services
• The Money Group
• Optimum Commercial
• Legal & General Mortgage Club
• Dynamo for Intermediaries
• PMS Mortgage Club
• Mortgage Advice Bureau

What’s more, this year, MFS became one of the latest full IMLA members, and chose One Mortgage System (OMS) to be its primary origination platform partner. With all these partnerships behind us, we’re ready to take our business to the next level, and provide even greater support for our clients.

5. Secured funding lines

We wouldn’t be able to move so confidently forward without robust funding lines behind us. In January, we reached the milestone of having secured charges against more than £1.5bn worth of UK property. Our loan book also neared the £1bn mark.

We previously set a goal of reaching a £1.1 billion loan book by early 2023 but given this progress, we increased our targets. We set a new goal of growing our loan book to £1.5bn by the end of the year.

Fortunately, we’re on track to reach that heightened goal, having secured institutional funding for both our bridging products, and BTL range.

Despite everything thrown at the property market and specialist finance industry in 2023, it’s been a good year for MFS. We’re ready for everything 2024 has got in store for us. As always, we’ll also be ready to support property investors with from a broad range of backgrounds and circumstances.