Understanding Finance for Non-Finance – Case Study
A recent collaboration with a building society created an opportunity to deliver, be it right or wrong. The programme also needed to provide their colleagues with the required commercial acumen and understanding of critical decisions, ensuring a more effective underwriting process, with the view of increasing profit generation in a typically low-margin industry.
The natural outcome for this is that the teams have greater confidence in their understanding of where and when they require additional information from customers, before sending files to the underwriting team. This would therefore positively impact on the customer’s mortgage journey, with less time spent on chasing information that could have been gathered at an earlier stage.
A programme would need to be designed for those without a finance background, to become more familiar with the terminology used in accounting and finance and how financial statements work, as well as introducing some of the core concepts of reporting and assessing financial performance.
Solution:
Our consultants developed a comprehensive solution aimed at giving colleagues the confidence they need to operate at the new desired level, throughout their day-to-day tasks.
The approach taken, incorporated 3 elements:
Research:
This important part of the process allowed the MPI Learning consultant to understand:
– The Mortgage Sales and Underwriters roles.
– Their level of confidence and competence in commercial awareness.
– The Societies mortgage process and procedures so we could speak their language.
Design:
We worked with the client to tailor this training, to fit their business models and objectives.
This covered being able to:
– Recognise and describing common terms and jargon.
– Identify the role and importance of finance within organisations.
– Understand Profit and Loss Account and Balance Sheets
– State the distinctions between Profit and Cash
– Identify used case studies of actual mortgage situations to support the theory and practical decision-making process.
Delivery:
The programme was delivered over 2 days and involved the delivery of the theory followed by highly interactive practical case studies.
Outcomes:
The training programme was effective in developing commercial acumen and critical decision-making skills, especially among colleagues that had a base level of financial knowledge. The client really enjoyed working with our facilitator, commenting that he had a “terrific character and a great delivery style.”
Our principal consultants are hand-picked for each project, to ensure they are the right people to deliver, design and lead your people through their learning journey.
A reflection from the sponsor, indicated a need for further tailoring of the training, with learning taking place in cohorts based on tiered competency levels (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced). This was an opportunity used to ensure that in the future, the programme was fully integrated and delivered the desired result at every level of cohort.
Read more about why understanding finance for non-finance is important here