Introduction
At Mortgage Advice Bureau (MAB), we believe in the need to make a positive contribution to our stakeholders, the communities around us, and the environment we operate in.
Not only does this help us to become a better company with a more engaged workforce, it also strengthens our competitive advantage. We’ve accelerated our investment in this area, making good progress across all our sustainability-related initiatives.
MAB serves a strong social purpose by helping people to fulfil their aspirations from homeownership and beyond – making key financial moments in life a simple, happy, and reassuring experience. This ethos has been made possible by continually investing in a diverse, talented, and knowledgeable workforce, whilst ensuring that our environmental impact is carefully monitored and reduced wherever possible.
Our commitment to Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) is demonstrated across every facet of our business.
Employees
Our newly refurbished head office has been designed to cater for all employees, including those who may need adjustments to be comfortable in an office environment. This forms an essential part of our goal to harness a culture that actively encourages communication, wellbeing, and inclusivity.
We’re committed to encouraging collaborative learning across the business, running a host of training initiatives - some of which have been tailored specifically to develop our female employees. We also run an employee wellbeing calendar, offering in-person and virtual support related to financial, emotional, and physical wellbeing.
Our employee engagement group bridges the gap between employees and senior management, while our dedicated DE&I (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) Group celebrates the diverse needs and values of our colleagues. Our ‘Social Gang’ organises social events and non-work related activities both in-person and remotely, helping employees get to know each other on a human level.
In recognition of our commitment to DE&I (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), we’ve amassed multiple award wins, including:
Some of the awards we have won over the years:
- Best Medium Organisation, Business Culture Awards
- Overall Winner, Business Culture Awards
- Best Business Transformation Initiative, Business Culture Awards
- Women’s Recognition Awards – Equality Employer of the Year
- Mortgage Introducer, Elite Women
Customers
Using our voices to educate consumers and the wider industry about the impact housing has on the UK’s overall carbon emissions, we actively explore opportunities that help reduce our societal impact on the environment, and benefit our customers. Our Green Hub contains a host of informative content to educate and encourage homebuyers and homeowners in their own journey to sustainable living.
We’re outcome-oriented, focused on finding solutions that help our customers realise their homeownership goals. We achieve this by ensuring our advisers are supported to provide tailored mortgage and protection advice, and that our systems can cater to the ever-changing needs and expectations of our customers.
Community
One of the ways that we actively serve our communities is via the projects supported by the Mortgage Advice Bureau Foundation. The Foundation is a grant-giving charity that supports community-based projects chosen by our staff, customers, and business partners. It was created to promote awareness among our stakeholders of the growing needs of the communities they live in, or are relocating to.
The Foundation supports projects in the following areas:
- Environment and conservation
- Health and wellbeing
- Preventing and relieving poverty
We also share our success with the communities around us, encouraging our colleagues to give back by volunteering during (and outside of) working hours. We also organise volunteering opportunities for groups centrally.
Environment
MAB is at the forefront of green mortgages, and our intention is to establish and maintain our position as an industry leader in this space. As well as our consumer-facing Green Hub, we also organised the first industry event exclusively focussed on green mortgages. We continue to improve our MIDAS platform to actively promote green mortgages to our advisers, who submit £1bn+ in green mortgages annually to our lending partners.
The narrative around green mortgages is rightly becoming more prominent, with momentum and interest gathering from advisers, consumers, and lenders. With housing generating around 20% of carbon emissions in the UK, we’ll continue to increase our focus in this area, in order to support our advisers and customers at the same time.
In terms of our own impact, our Scope 1 (gas) and Scope 2 (electricity) emissions per employee have reduced by 48% since 2020. We switched energy suppliers with the objective of being powered by 100% renewable electricity at our head office (and all FMD offices), as well as installing energy-saving lighting and heating solutions.
We expect our annual energy emissions per employee to continue to decrease due to the major refurbishment at our head office (completed in January 2023). Minimising our environmental impact was a central consideration for this project, as was repurposing furniture and sourcing products from local suppliers where practical. Extensive workplace analysis and culture surveys were undertaken during this period, ensuring that employee needs were fully aligned with the space. Further detail can be found in our environmental impact and strategy report.
Governance
As a company, we believe that good governance is crucial to the delivery of our strategic objectives. We aim to remain abreast of best practices and developments in the regulatory frameworks that we operate within, as well as in the ways that we service our customers’ needs.
Our compliance processes and robust controls have resulted in MAB being well-regarded by lenders, both for volume of transactions and customer outcomes. We continue to measure highly for customer satisfaction through the online review platform Feefo, with a score of 4.9 out of 5 from over 24,300 reviews.
In 2022, the number of customer complaints received was 0.2% of written mortgage volumes (2021: 0.1%, 2020: 0.2%). We remain below the threshold for referred complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service, and do not appear on its public database as a result.
