Brokers are key messengers for Halifax’s green good news

Brokers play key role in sharing Halifax’s green message

The relationship between Halifax Intermediaries and the broker community is pivotal in highlighting its green initiatives, Amanda Bryden tells Simon Meadows

Amanda Bryden, head of Halifax Intermediaries & Scottish Widows Bank, believes the lender can lead the green agenda, boosted by the support of the broker community.

Bryden has endorsed the importance of good relationships with brokers in developing Halifax’s green programme and truly connecting with homeowners.

“This is essential,” she explained. “We start from a very good point, but without these relationships our task would be so much more difficult. If we all work together on this, the results will be much better. The fact that we have great relationships with clubs and networks also means we can take a more strategic approach to coordinating education and communications.”

The broker community, Bryden believes, also has a real opportunity to engage with borrowers by including discussion of sustainability in its mortgage advice. Brokers are already on board.

“We have some early adopters who actively seek to understand how they can make sustainability part of their client conversations,” she said. “We also have some who are at the beginning or who have yet to start their journey to understanding this area. There is a real opportunity for brokers to reinforce the value of great mortgage advice and bolster this by demonstrating their understanding of the sustainable homes challenges and what it means for homeowners, be that addressing immediate desires for a greener home or understanding how to fund retrofitting to future-proof their homes’ value. That is where we, as lenders, have a key role in increasing this engagement.”

As widespread discussion of green issues and energy bills gains traction in all quarters of society, from the House of Commons to the business world and in homes across the UK, Halifax Intermediaries is keen to fully showcase the value of its green initiatives and products.

“We want to take a leading role in helping create more consumer demand for sustainable homes and support the market in increasing the supply of and understanding the benefits of sustainable housing,” Bryden enthused. “With our excellent relationships across the market and with policy makers, we are uniquely placed to lead the green agenda. For example, we recently joined colleagues across our intermediary channel in

“With our excellent relationships across the market and with policy makers, we are uniquely placed to lead the green agenda”

hosting a housing forum, attended by stakeholders from right across the housing and mortgage ecosystem, where we discussed how we can work together on key challenges including how to take forward the sustainability challenge.”

PRIDE IN GREEN

Halifax Intermediaries prides itself on a range of innovations such as its home energy saving tool (HEST), which can be used by brokers to easily initiate discussions with clients about sustainability, encouraging them to consider green home improvements to improve their property’s Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating. The tool will also provide an estimated EPC rating and calculate CO2 emissions, as well as giving the indicative costs of work to be undertaken.

“We thought carefully about the challenge of changing homeowner behaviour on sustainability and very early on realised that people need help to understand the practical side of what to do to their homes,” said Bryden. “As a bank we do not give advice on specifics of what improvements are suitable, as we leave this to the experts, but we have teamed up with Energy Saving Trust, an independent organisation whose focus is on addressing the climate emergency, and created a positive working partnership to help with our knowledge. It provides an impartial view, helping customers get the answers

they need and sharing the factors to consider when hiring tradespeople.”

She continued, “As part of this, we realised that their energy savings tool was exactly the sort of help people needed in thinking about their homes, and we launched this through the Halifax public site. This went really well, and we’ve now launched a broker version of the tool through Halifax Intermediaries.”

The lender has also developed its Green Living Hubs on its website, to which a client can be signposted to help them understand basics, which it believes is a valuable resource to enable borrowers to gain a better grasp of the issues around sustainable homes, such as the importance of an EPC. It offers help with education and messages for homeowners, including free virtual green events on renewables, covering subjects such as how solar panels work and demystifying heat pumps, alongside considerations of whether these could be the right solution for homeowners considering their options.

“As there is so much useful information on sustainability, we thought it would be helpful to create a central place people could access to find everything in one place,” Bryden said. She added that a ring-fenced intermediary version of the Green Living Hub would be coming soon.

What did the Halifax Intermediaries head think was the key differentiator of its green approach in an already noisy, competitive marketplace?

“Two key things,” she shared. “First, we have already built and launched some of the foundations for helping the market with sustainability. HEST gives brokers and homeowners a tool to help them understand how they can make their homes more sustainable. We also want to build EPC data into applications to help build effective propositions. Secondly, we have the largest Business Development Manager (BDM) support teams in the market, and we are helping to make them experts in the field of sustainability. We want to use this expertise to help the market transition into the green economy by facilitating conversations and holding training events when the market is ready. Watch out for more news soon.”

Amanda Bryden

UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER BEHAVIOUR

Bryden believes the business she leads can also be high-profile in the drive to improve the EPC rating of the UK’s housing sector.

“We have the largest mortgage book and millions of customer relationships through our banking propositions, so we will play a huge role in encouraging sustainable activity,” she said. “We are spending time understanding customer behaviour and what it is that drives them to retrofit, and continually engaging with all stakeholders across the housing sector.”

These are, quite clearly, very unsettled times for the UK economy. Concerns over the environment and energy prices have become hot political topics, occupying many hours of debate among our parliamentary representatives in Westminster, much of it animated. So, what might Halifax Intermediaries seek from the government in terms of reassurance for its industry and, importantly, its customers?

“Achieving net-zero targets in housing will require everyone to play a part, and that will include government support in a number of areas,” Bryden suggested. “In order to grab homeowner attention, communication and some sort of incentivisation are required. For example, the cost of changes is high, and the payback period is long, so could parts of the cost be subsidised or could some form of tax incentive be designed?” Finally, she reflected, “Certain populations will simply be unable to pay for improvements, so government support will be essential here and, furthermore, regulation could help in areas such as supply chain.”