Meet Michael Saunders, Business Development Manager

Mike, what do you enjoy about your role?

Getting out and about, meeting our brokers and developing new relationships. I mainly look after brokers in the south west of England and border counties. A lot of people don’t realise that even though we’re a Welsh building society, we are able to lend in England. Although we do exclude the Scilly Isles, Isle of Man and Channel Islands.

That’s a big area for you to cover! Do you face any challenges?

Yes, it is. I suppose my challenges include building new relationships and awareness that the Society can lend outside of Wales, growing new contacts in new areas. This has been made harder by the pandemic and not being able to get out and meet people. However, with our new BDM Jamal, we are looking at more creative ways to engage through webinars and Teams calls. Our first webinar was a great success and we can’t wait to do the next one. We can reach more people in one webinar than we could getting out on the road. However, there is no substitute for human contact and face to face catch ups.

What do you enjoy about working at the Society?

Definitely the culture, we’re a friendly team working as one Society with some serious ambition to grow. There’s been a lot of changes over the past few years and, with our new strategy to guide us, we are really focusing on our members, colleagues and communities. I’ve enjoyed seeing this approach come to life, especially our Branching into Communities programme and its amazing initiatives, like our volunteering programme and our Social Responsibility Panel.

Finally Mike, what are your goals for the future?

To continue delivering a first class experience for our broker network so that they can support their clients through the mortgage journey. Whether you’re a first time buyer or adding to your buy-to-let portfolio, the journey can be daunting. Our job is to reduce the pain and help find the right solutions, and if we can’t we’re here next time. I believe it’s through providing personal support and really caring about the parties involved that we’ll reach our main goal which is to grow our network.

If you’re an intermediary with a question for Mike, or any other member of the Business Development team, contact brokers@monbs.com or call 01633 844380.