Virgin Money and Kensington win comparethemarket.com Simples Awards for mortgages
3 March 2020 – comparethemarket.com today announces the winners of The Simples Awards, a new initiative to celebrate companies that consistently deliver excellent service and innovation to help make their customers’ lives simpler.
In the mortgage category, Virgin Money has won the award for Service and Kensington Mortgages has won the award for Innovation.
The Service award recognises the providers that have consistently delivered the highest quality of service to their customers, while the Innovation award recognises those that have provided technology and tools which are simple, intuitive and time efficient, or products that are innovative in their design and benefits. The awards celebrate those companies which have provided services, solutions and information to actively remove the pressures of making household financial decisions and make consumers’ lives simpler.
Virgin Money demonstrated commitment to customer service in their ‘no internal mortgage prisoner’ policy, which allows existing customers to switch to a new deal, regardless of their loan-to-value and credit history. Virgin Money’s Buy to Let offering also contributed to its winning the award, as it is one of the small number of mainstream lenders to offer BTL mortgages with only a 20% deposit.
Kensington Mortgages ‘Hero Mortgage’ contributed to claiming the award for Innovation. The mortgage was created using customer insight and provides a solution for the needs of public sector workers, for example nurses, policeman and firefights, enabling them to secure homeownership.
The awards were judged by a panel of industry and media experts, including:
- Simon McCulloch, Commercial Director, comparethemarket.com and Chair of the Simples Awards
- Holly Thomas, Freelance journalist
- Tara Evans, Digital Consumer Editor, The Sun
- Jo Faith, Editor, YourMoney.com
- Mike Preston, Business Development Director – The idol.com
- Martin Williams – Managing Director, Octo Telematics UK
Full details of the awards can be found on the Simples Awards hub on the comparethemarket.com website.
Simon McCulloch, Director at comparethemarket.com, said:
“I am thrilled to announce Virgin Money and Kensington Mortgages as the first ever winners of the Simples Awards for mortgages. These providers have gone above and beyond to make their customers’ lives simpler and to help remove some of the time and stress of household financial management. There was a lot of discussions between the judges over which providers should be crowned winners and runners-up, which shows just how competitive this market has become. We are excited to see what new services and innovations mortgage providers will deliver over the coming year.”
Nicola Goldie, Head of National Accounts at Virgin Money, said:
“Virgin Money is delighted to have been recognised for its mortgage service and feel very proud to have won the Compare the Market Mortgage Service award.
“We continue to transform the way we work and in the true spirit of transformation, we’ve approached it with our customers very much in mind.
“However, we will not rest on our laurels and we are continuously looking to improve our proposition making the service we offer to customers the best and most efficient it can be.”
Vicki Harris, Chief Commercial Officer at Kensington Mortgages, said:
“We are delighted to have won this award. The Heroes Mortgage is dedicated to all the Heroes amongst us who don’t do their jobs for the financial reward, the recognition or the glory, but because they care for other people more than themselves. Using our propriety data and analytics tool, Vector, we were able to study these Heroes’ career trajectories and financial behaviour in order to better understand their earnings level, job security and payment histories. By doing so, we identified a new way of helping them through creating specialised lending criteria which should help them get the mortgage that they need to buy the house that they deserve. ”
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