2018-01-30
Andy, our Business Manager, runs our accounts and marathons
Meet Andy, our business manager. When he’s not in trainers, running home from work or running a marathon you can find him baking moreish cheese straws and updating accounts, providing financial reports and liaising with suppliers at SortRefer. In the office, Andy is the go-to man when it comes to product knowledge, business knowledge and overall general expertise about all things to do with mortgages, conveyancing and business!
A career change at 40!
Andy’s knowledge and experience comes from working as a mortgage broker for five years. Before working in the mortgage industry, Andy worked at Royal Mail coding letters and working in the operations team. He decided to change his career at 40 after some career advice from SortRefer’s CEO, Kev Tunnicliffe. After changing career and gaining five years experience, Andy helped to develop and execute SortRefer back in 2009. The rest, you may say, is history!
Creating SortRefer – bringing ideas to life
For Andy, working as a mortgage broker had its ups and downs. The positives included problem solving in order to make a difference to the client and he gained a great sense of job satisfaction seeing happy clients as a result. Compliance and paperwork that came as part of the job was often timely and frustrating, especially when lenders didn’t supply updates. During 2007-2008, the market was in the middle of a financial crash and a career as a mortgage broker posed problems which there seemed to be no solution for.
Behold, the birth of SortRefer. After months of analysing the market, planning potential products and creating the initial portal, SortRefer was ready to add value to the mortgage broker. Starting off slowly, now, the portal has grown in size and following.
Andy quickly became Business Manager, and his key focuses are working on projects to enhance the offering from SortRefer further.
Andy says:
“We receive a lot of feedback regarding our system and part of my job is to filter this and make decisions on what will improve our offering. We are constantly making small changes to the website with the latest improvements. I am also responsible for introducing new products and making sure they will be of benefit to our introducers, as well as being commercially viable. Having oversight of the accounts I am able to make recommendations on where we can improve our financial margins.”
It's all about Andy
Here are some things you may not know:
- At 40 he had his first tattoo
- He ran the Edinburgh Marathon for the Macular Society in 2017
- This year he will be running his third marathon
- If Andy was stranded on a desert island, the three things he’d take with him are his iPhone playlist, a pile of Jo Nesbo novels and a pair of running shoes.
