When we started Kensington we were the first specialist lender to offer mortgages to people the high street turned down. Over 25 years later, we're the UK's leading specialist mortgage lender still blazing a trail offering people the chance to get a mortgage. Where high street lenders see black and white, we've always used our expertise and manual underwriting capability to see the shades in between. In a market where changing lifestyles mean more people are falling outside the traditional mortgage criteria, it's an approach that can make a real difference to people who want to own a property.
It's what we call the Kensington Difference.
Kensington Mortgage Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Barclays Bank UK PLC from 1 March 2023, and the principal activity of the Company is the origination and servicing of mortgage assets. The Company is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority for regulated activities.
**Overall Purpose of Job
The Credit & Lending Policy Manager will interface and have specific interaction across the business with Underwriting, Operations, Sales, Property Management Team, Marketing, Group Change, Legal, Compliance, Treasury and Finance, Third Party Oversight Team and the 3rd Party Servicers.
Primarily, responsible for Kensington's policy suite including the related underwriting standards and customer service standards to ensure compliance with responsible lending considerations, Kensington Risk Appetite and the fair treatment of customers.
**Role and Responsibilities:
The Credit & Lending Policy Manager will be involved in the following tasks:
Policy Management:
- Maintain and refine Kensington's Credit policy suite including the related underwriting standards and customer service standards to ensure compliance with responsible lending considerations, Kensington Risk Appetite and the fair treatment of customers. (Includes Lending Policy; Affordability Policy; Assessment Rate Policies; Customer Credit Reporting Policy/Procedures; Contract Variations Policy)
- Adhering the correct approval governance procedure, ensuring each policy at its annual review takes into consideration risk profile improvements and productivity and includes recommendations for changes and amendments in line with market, legal and regulatory changes.
- Attend Policy Governance Committee to present policy changes for approval.
- Managing Implementation of approved policies including liaison with systems development and Marketing team.
Oversight Management:
- Customer Credit Reporting Activities
- Attendance at CAIS Oversight monthly meetings, and cover in absence of Credit Risk Manager.
- Liaise directly with CRA to assist and manage the investigation of customer credit reporting disputes for a speedy resolution driving positive customer outcomes.
- ChatBOT - Maintaining proficiency and ensure Team act as the subject matter experts in training the BOT's responses to Lending Policy queries.
- UK Finance - Handbook - Maintaining of the Kensington UKF Handbooks, with input from Legal team as appropriate.
- 3rd Party - Relationship Management - Attending regular monthly reviews with key business partners e.g. Equifax with Credit Risk Manager, and covering in absence of CRM.
Thematic Reviews/Audits
- Carrying out audits specific to Key Risk Indicators triggers that have flagged trends which may warrant further investigations and checking that changes to Policy have been fully embedded into BAU procedures.
- Present findings and outcomes to Product Committee for review and recommendations.
General
- Support all funding relationships and represent Kensington Credit Risk as policy SME in meetings with Funding banks.
- Attendance and presenting at Weekly Trading meeting.
- Review and approve all marketing material/websites/communications relating to the lending policy changes
- Maintaining the Record Retention Schedule reviewing records stored in drives to ensure that where customer data is contained we meet the requirements of the Data Protection Policy and the Data Retention Policy
- Actively support the business in achieving its strategic objectives by raising Risks to their Risk Champion, adhering to all controls and Risk management policies, and being forthcoming with any process improvement suggestions to decrease the likelihood of a Risk occurring.
- Retentions (Product Switches) process workflow - Initiate the monthly retentions process. Follow workflow to ensure each business stakeholder takes full responsibility and accountability for their role in the manual process set out in the project RACI. Monitoring existing MI looking for further enhancements to the current reporting. Identify potential improvements to the process and support projects in the building and development of potential automated solutions. Attendance at weekly Retentions Forum meetings.
- Mortgage Prisoner (Communications and product offerings) - Ensuring that all business stakeholders manage their tasks within the Mortgage Prisoner process, to meet timelines for letter production and pool switches.
**Experience, Knowledge, Skills
- Experience of FCA regulatory environment
- Report writing and presentation
- Data and portfolio analysis experience
- Advance use of computer software i.e. Excel for analysis and reporting, and Word for Policy writing
- Collections and back book administration experience
- Recent working knowledge of mortgage processing and Arrears Management and/or Experience in Prime and Specialist lending as an Underwriter holding a minimum mandate of £500k