When I joined Vida as CEO at the beginning of 2020, I couldn’t have imagined what lay ahead for the mortgage market. This has been a year unlike any other, one full of challenges (but also opportunities!). It has certainly been eventful for us at Vida.

Just a few months into my new role, the financial services market – like most other sectors – had to adapt to the implications of a global pandemic. We quickly found our feet with remote working and stepped up to support thousands of customers facing sudden financial difficulties with mortgage payment holidays.

As the capital markets were hit by fears around the pandemic, securitisations became a prohibitively expensive form of funding, meaning Vida had to take decisive short term action and withdraw from the market in order to protect our business, our employees and - most importantly - our customers.

Since then, we have successfully returned to the securitisation market allowing us to re-open to what has been a buoyant mortgage market, supporting record levels of demand. At Vida we received an overwhelmingly positive response from our broker partners and customers when we returned to lending in August.

The spike in demand across recent months has presented challenges for intermediaries and lenders across the market. Protecting service levels for our broker partners is our core priority at the moment and we know we need to do better. That is why we have taken action to carefully manage our new business pipeline whilst we ensure that we meet the deadlines and expectations of the cases already in process during what remains an incredibly busy time in the market. The measures we have taken in recent weeks have already dramatically improved our ability to manage our existing pipeline of business.

For now, I would like to take a moment to thank all those who have continued to put their trust in Vida during the challenges of 2020 and to wish you all a happy & healthy New Year.