Matthew Cumber from Countrywide Surveying Services talks to us about the history of the firm, and his thoughts on the future challenges for the business and sector from AI to climate change.
Tell us about your organisation and what makes it different from others in your sector.
We are a people led business, driven by a continual desire to always look at how we can improve, both the daily working lives of our colleagues as well as the service we offer our customers – as they really go hand in hand. We never rest on our laurels and only want to work with clients who truly want to have a partnership and have aligned objectives with us. We take pride in what we do and many of our clients have been with us for decades. I personally lead a senior team who have been with the organisation for most if not all of their working lives which means we have a built-in sense of community.
When, how and why was Countrywide founded?
Countrywide Surveying was founded in 1985 to provide mortgage valuations for banks and building societies, it became part of the wider Countrywide Property Services Group which was acquired by the Connells Group in 2021. The business has developed and grown over the years but fundamentally still provides risk management services as well as mortgage valuations for our lending clients and providing private surveys for customers wanting to understand the condition of their property.
Why did Countrywide join the Council?
Countrywide Surveying has many clients in the equity release/later life lending industry. We were acutely aware that as the sector is an important part of our business, we needed to be fully immersed and work alongside all the partis involved and become part of the present and future, so we decided an important step was to become part of the council.
How might your services benefit other members and/or their clients?
With our decades of experience in this sector, we understand both the specific risk-based requirements of our lending partners, which can be very different to the big banks and building societies, plus we also understand that we are interacting with customers who may have specific needs and vulnerabilities. Also, our team of surveyors are entering customers’ homes on behalf of our clients, and this can be a very stressful time so we see one of our objectives is to make this a very user-friendly experience for all.
What are the greatest opportunities and challenges facing your business and the sector at the moment?
Everyone will agree that climate change is having an enormous effect on housing now and will do so long into the future, so the challenge is to ensure people have warm, sustainably safe homes, plus ensuring lenders have the confidence to lend on properties and take intelligent data led decisions based on environmental issues such as an increase to risk of flooding.
Our challenge as an industry is to ensure we meet these challenges for both clients and customers alike, at Countrywide we have been evolving our business to ensure we lead in the use of data led decision making, bringing accurate and timely decisions to the process. One of the many opportunities facing us is the use of automated technology – let’s call it AI!
This will revolutionise my business in the daily task-based processes, which will mean my team being able to spend even more time on the more important parts of their roles, improving productivity and customer satisfaction alike.
Where do you see your business in five years?
Predicting the future in an uncertain world is tricky, as no one saw the effect of COVID, or the many Geopolitical challenges. However, we will still be providing a superb service to the sector due to an even greater use of data led decision making and I expect will have started to transform how we do this with the use of AI. The size of the equity release/later lending industry will also be even more important than it is now and as a business we will continue to provide our services to a wider range of clients by 2030!
The views of contributors are not necessarily those of the Council
