The Finance Roome celebrates 15 years, as Ellen Roome, Managing Director reflects on over a decade of providing mortgages and insurance protection

The Finance Roome, based at Staverton Airport in Gloucestershire are specialists in tailored mortgage and insurance packages for businesses and private homes. As the company celebrates being 15 years old, Ellen Roome highlights some of the key things the business has achieved over the years…

"Who would have thought 15 years on from starting The Finance Roome at home in my bedroom that, thanks to Covid, I’d be back there again. But this time, I’ve got an amazing team working alongside me".

Largest mortgage deal

Our largest mortgage deal was a £15m loan for a client in London! I remember being terrified of meeting this high profile, successful man and feeling terribly inferior. I sat in the meeting room with the private bank team. When they turned to my client and asked what he wanted to achieve, he completely lost his composure. Without thinking I took over – in an instant, we’d swapped places. It taught me never to doubt myself and always believe in what you know.

Since then, we’ve handled numerous property portfolios, and it’s a part of this job that I love.

No kitchen cupboard doors, no mortgage!

For the past 15 years my PA, Tricia, and I have arranged countless auction mortgages for a client who started with just one property and expanded very quickly. I think we both remember the transaction that almost didn’t happen. The mortgage lender wouldn’t lend because were no kitchen cupboard doors or a hob in the property! The race was on to swap lenders and secure the money …. and we did it!

We’ve had clients get married, have children, get divorced, and with life’s twists and turns we are there to adapt to their ever changing situation.

Helping people when times get tough

Over the past few years we’ve had numerous clients claim on insurance policies that we have arranged for them. When you put these plans in place you hope your clients will never need them, however when they pay out it’s amazing to see the support it can bring to someone’s life. Income protection, cancer claims, we truly believe it’s so important to look at protecting our clients fully.

I’d like to thank everyone for your support and business – we are so very grateful. Here’s to another 15 years of looking after you all.

QUICK MORTGAGE UPDATE

Things are beginning to move in the mortgage market with the chancellor announcing an extension to the stamp duty holiday he launched last year for England and Northern Ireland, and a new UK scheme to bring back 95% mortgages.

So far this year we have applied for 117 enquiries, 68 mortgages across 26 different lenders (we have access to thousands of products)  with an average loan size of £217,084.00.

If you’re looking for a first-time mortgage, wanting to re-mortgage or release equity from your home, please talk to us. We search 1000’s of mortgage deals across hundreds of lenders; from mainstream lenders such as the Halifax, Barclays, Natwest and Santander to lesser-known building societies like the Swansea or Market Harborough. But more importantly, to us you’re always more than just a number or a voice on the phone,  you’re a valued customer.

DID YOU KNOW WE DO BUSINESS INSURANCE TOO?

Business continuity planning is a key part in protecting the stability and continuity of your business.

It ensures your business continues to trade if the unexpected happened.

Like most businesses, you have probably made sure your assets are covered and insured your buildings, your stock, cars and materials against the effects of fire, theft or other unforeseen events.

But what about you?

Have you made a plan for who would take control of your business if you died or became critically ill? And what about a key member of staff?  Could your business cope without them?

With a continuity plan in place, if key people within your business become ill long-term or die, you will be able to:

• keep your business trading
• replace key individuals
• provide employee benefits
• protect corporate debt
• buy out a shareholder, or their estate, if they become critically ill or die

Despite its obvious benefits, planning ahead to ensure your business is protected is an area business owners tend to avoid. In most small and medium sized businesses, success depends on one or sometimes two key people. Would your business suffer if a partner, director, or your top salesman, responsible for bringing in most of the profit, or a valued technician, or key strategist died? If you’ve worked with these people for many years, it’s easy to underestimate their value, their skills, knowledge and experience or perhaps their contacts and relationships.

You can’t predict what will happen in the future, but you can have the right protection in place to help keep your business going should a key person become critically ill or even die.

Protection for key employees is just one area of business protection. You might also want to consider protection for shareholders or partners. Without this type of cover in place, if the shareholder dies their family might have to sell the shares to someone else, maybe even a competitor. There’s also protection for business loans, as there could be severe consequences if loans are not protected such as an inability to make repayments.

You can find out more about our business insurance and download our free Business Continuity Plan toolkit here.

DOWNLOAD your copy here:

The Finance Roome provides clients with a variety of business protection products to help you protect your business and your people.

If you’d like to speak to us, call the business protection team at our Cheltenham office today on 01242 226353 or email us: [email protected] to request a call back.