Callcredit restructures group

Callcredit Information Group has restructured its businesses it announced today.

The group, owned by Skipton Building Society and led by chief executive Mike Green, is creating two customer facing divisions: marketing solutions and credit solutions.  Credit solutions, headed up by John McAndrew, includes the businesses Callcredit, DecisionMetrics and Legatio. Graham Lund (pictured) is promoted to managing director of Callcredit.

Marketing solutions will be headed up by Caroline Worboys and comprises EuroDirect, BroadSystem and GMAP. The division will supply prospecting and customer retention information services to consumer-focused businesses.

McAndrew said: "the Callcredit Information Group has doubled in size over the last 12 months through organic growth and acquisitions. Increasingly our customers are looking for complex solutions comprising information, analytics, models and software. Whilst we will maintain the unique service ethos, flexibility and innovation of the individual businesses, this restructuring enables customers to receive comprehensive and strategic credit, verification and marketing solutions from a one stop shop".

He added: "The next two years are extraordinarily challenging for our customers. Legacy processes have proved not to be optimal and lenders are telling us that better information and new risk methodologies are fundamental to them knowing their customers and lending responsibly in these tough times.  These changes will enable us to help our customers find and keep profitable customers more effectively in this changing climate."

www.credittoday.co.uk

HomeBuy Direct

 

Information taken from www.communities.gov.uk

Scheme is due to start in early 2009

What is HomeBuy Direct?

HomeBuy Direct is a new shared equity scheme designed to help up to 10,000 First-Time Buyers into affordable home ownership. The scheme will also help participating house builders by enabling more First-Time Buyers to purchase their newly built properties. The scheme has been allocated £300m of Communities and Local Government funding.
The scheme will be offered on specific new build properties brought forward by developers. Buyers will be offered an equity loan of up to 30 per cent of the purchase price, co-funded by Government and the developer.   

Why have you introduced it?

We recognise the difficulties being faced by the house building industry and First-Time Buyers in the current housing market, where the global supply of credit has led to the most severe market conditions since the early 1990s.  
Evidence collected by the Regional Development Agencies (eg the recent survey of house builders undertaken by the South East England Development Agency - SEEDA), English Partnerships, The Home Builders Federation and others has demonstrated the impact on house builders - who have experienced a reduction in new reservations - and on First Time Buyers, who have struggled to raise the deposits they need in the tough mortgage market conditions.
HomeBuy Direct will respond to the current market conditions by:

• making more affordable homes available to First-Time Buyers who are currently priced out of the market, due to the higher cost of obtaining a mortgage or the need to provide a larger deposit
• providing a targeted boost to the housing market by stimulating more transactions, and      
• helping to maintain the capacity of the house building industry to respond when market conditions improve. This will, in turn, help us to achieve our long-term housing supply targets.

How will it work?

Once launched, HomeBuy Direct will operate as follows:

• Developers will shortly be invited to submit bids to the Housing Corporation to provide HomeBuy Direct on selected properties and sites. The Corporation will assess the bids according to published criteria, and will have regard to regional housing strategies and any additional evidence submitted by the Regional Development Agencies about current housing market challenges.
• As with the other HomeBuy products, the 23 regional HomeBuy Agents will be the first point of contact for First-Time Buyers who are interested in applying for the scheme.  
• General eligibility for HomeBuy Direct will be the same as for the other HomeBuy products (ie households earning less than £60,000 who could not afford to buy a suitable property on the open market without assistance in the area where they live or work).  
• Applicants will also be subject to an affordability check, designed to assess the size of equity share that they are able to afford and sustain.  
• If applicants qualify for the scheme, they will be invited to choose one of the HomeBuy Direct properties brought forward by the developers.  
• The purchaser will receive an equity loan of up to 30 per cent of the purchase price of the chosen property. The equity loan will be co-funded on equal terms by Government and by the developer supplying the property. The purchaser must contribute the remaining equity (a minimum of 70 per cent), through their mortgage (which could be obtained from any lender regulated by the Financial Services Authority) and any deposit.
• The equity loan will be free of charge to the purchaser for the first five years. From year six, a 1.75 per cent charge will be levied. This rises at RPI+1 per cent each year.
• Purchasers can redeem the equity loan in installments, purchasing up to 100 per cent equity after their initial purchase by buying additional equity at the market rate.
• Buyers will be able to sell their HomeBuy Direct home on the open market. When they do so, they will repay the equity loan by way of a share of the sale proceeds. This repayment will be shared equally between Government and the developer.
• If the value of the property has increased by the point of sale, the buyer, the developer and Government will all share in this increase. If the value of the property has gone down, Government and the developer will only share the sale proceeds that are left over once the mortgage has been repaid. This provides the buyer with greater protection against negative equity. 

Who will it help?

HomeBuy Direct will help:

• First-Time Buyers
  The scheme is targeted at First-Time Buyers who cannot afford to buy a suitable property on the open market without assistance in the area where they live or work. This may be due to the higher cost of borrowing at present, or other factors. Depending on the bids we receive from developers, we expect to be able to help up to 10,000 First-Time Buyers through HomeBuy Direct.
• House builders
  Current market conditions and lack of mortgage liquidity are impacting heavily on the house building industry. There is a long-term public interest in maintaining the capacity of the industry to respond with increased supply when the housing market recovers. The scheme will help participating house builders by enabling First-Time Buyers to purchase their properties (by offering purchasers a better deal than they would otherwise have received).
• The housing market
  First-Time Buyers are one of the key drivers of the housing market. By assisting First-Time Buyers to purchase, HomeBuy Direct will provide a targeted boost to the market. This will encourage developers to build more to meet the extra demand.

Who will be eligible?

General eligibility for the scheme is the same as for our other HomeBuy schemes (ie households earning less than £60,000 who could not afford to buy a suitable property on the open market without assistance).
Although the scheme is targeted at First-Time Buyers, HomeBuy Direct could also help people who have previously owned properties but are now unable to buy without assistance, for example in the case of relationship breakdowns or families who are over-crowded in their existing homes.

Web 2.0 and Retail Banking: Less Hype Equals Opportunity

Web 2.0 is one of the most misused and abused terms in business today. While consumer expectations advance at a fast pace, a gap between consumer expectations and bank delivery grows. Without a change in strategy, this delivery gap will widen and threaten the bottom line, according to a new report, Web 2.0 and Retail Banking: Less Hype Equals Opportunity from Celent, a Boston-based financial research and consulting firm.
Key findings of the report include:
• Celent defines Web 2.0 as the tipping point in the evolution of the Internet, where consumer behavior and activity and their enabling technology emphasize the user experience and capabilities as engaging, interactive, and collaborative. Web 2.0 represents a departure from the aspects of much of the Internet's legacy roots of one-way communication and static, desegregated data. Absent the hype and technobabble, Web 2.0 might simply be characterized as "the dynamic Internet" or "the interactive Internet."
• Banks can realize the untapped opportunity Web 2.0 provides by:
1) Realizing Web 2.0 is not a specific technology; rather, it is a shift in consumer behavior (largely online) and the technology supporting it.
2) Understanding the drivers of the behavior shift as well as the behaviors and expectations of post-Web 2.0 consumers.
3) Recognizing that the gap between traditional banking products and services and the expectations of the post-Web 2.0 consumer is significant, and it grows every year the bank does not evolve.
4) Creating a roadmap to transition the bank's products, services, and marketing and sales methodologies to remain relevant to a rapidly evolving consumer population.
5) Accepting that-though some banks will not change, and still continue to exist-those that can evolve their product and services offerings to be on par with and relevant to an evolving consumer population will see the greatest returns.
6) Applying a smattering of pixie dust in the form of add-ons or queues such as charts, or participating in a social network, will move the needle, but decades of consumer evolution require looking at the bank's product and services in a new way.
• Banks have not been on the leading edge of online consumer sales. Consumers have continued to change, and so have banks, but at a much slower rate. While consumer expectations advance at a faster pace than banks can support, the gap between expectations and delivery grows, threatening many banks' bottom lines.
• Generation Y's expectations of the retail experience (online and offline) have been shaped by the Internet. The wise retail banker will look at this segment's needs and begin a transition plan to ready the bank to serve them. Without a change in strategy, this delivery gap will begin growing at a faster pace, particularly as Generation Y-which will include 84 million US consumers in 2010-becomes a more important market segment for banks. Combined with the following generation, dubbed Generation Z, these groups will represent over half (53%) of the US population in 2020 and nearly two-thirds (64%) in 2030.
• Although Web 2.0 will have the greatest impact on the bank's marketing and sales strategy, the impact of Web 2.0's enabling technology will be great. Addressing consumers' broadening expectations will require a cultural shift within the bank as well as a technical one. Where the experiential side of Web 2.0 presumes information transparency and richness as well as collaboration, it will impact system design and system integration. The shift in design patterns and methodologies will benefit the end consumer and internal bank staff, and in time will help the bank deliver new products and services faster and at a lower cost (based on the increasing share of standards-based development).

www.bobsguide.com