The Intermediary – April 2025 - Flipbook - Page 20
Meet The BDM
Family Building Society
The Intermediary speaks with Gina England, business
development manager (BDM) for the East and West Midlands
at the Family Building Society
How and why did you
What brought you to the
become a BDM?
Family Building Society?
I started my career in financial
services at Lloyds Bank, commercial
lending division, which I enjoyed
and where I learned a great deal.
However, after lockdown I decided
I’d much prefer to work in an
environment where I could be out
and about meeting people and
building relationships with brokers.
The opportunity arose to join the
Hinckley and Rugby as a BDM, which
was very refreshing after a mainly
phone-based role at Lloyds. I then
joined the Coventry, also as a BDM,
where I stayed for some two years,
which again I enjoyed, particularly
liaising with brokers to find solutions
to the more complex cases.
I was approached by a recruiter
about an exciting opportunity. When
I was told it was the Family, I was
very excited as I had heard a lot
of good things about the society.
I was very pleased when Darren
Deacon, head of intermediary sales,
offered me the job of East and
West Midlands BDM – an area he
used to cover. Darren is now fully
concentrating on his role managing
our growing team of BDMs and our
business strategy.
These are exciting times for
the mutual sector and a growing
market for the ‘niche’ lender. By
lending to typically underserved
borrowers, mortgage providers
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The Intermediary | April 2025
such as the Family offer a solution
to those would-be borrowers
who traditionally believed that no
institution would ever lend to them.
What makes the Family
stand out?
Family by name, family by nature.
The society is a genuine multigenerational lender; from first to
last-time buyer, lending to those
underserved by the major, former
high street lenders.
It is truly innovative, making
decisions on underwriting the more
interesting and less straightforward
applications. More importantly,
decisions on lending are taken on a
case-by-case basis. There is no onesize-fits-all approach and there is no
computer to say ‘no’.
