Wow! What a turn out!

Thank you to all the people who came in to our High Street Kilkenny Branch last night and made our first mortgage information evening a superb success. We will be sending out surveys to those who attended to find out what we could have done differently or better, to prepare us better for the next one, as we want to make these much more of a regular thing.

We can always set up zoom meetings for anyone who cannot travel or would prefer an online meeting. We also have mortgage appointments available on Saturdays which many people were not aware of.

Some of the recurring themes were; people wanting to self-build, so we can reassure members that this product feature has been bumped up the product roll out map as a result. There were also many people who were switching, for many different reasons. Ulster Bank and KBC leaving the market were the top reasons and also a few who had been “encouraged” to warehouse part of their mortgage and then the mortgage sold on to a vulture fund, with rates as high as 4.1%. Looking at ways we could offer a mortgage in those circumstances is always tricky but we do our best to help.

Now that we have amazingly competitive fixed rates to offer of 2.9% over 3 years and 2.95% over 5 years, we foresee lots of switchers coming over to their credit union as mortgage provider of trust & choice. Which is music to our ears as we need to increase our long term lending to continue to be viable for all our service offerings to members.

Having a personal dedicated mortgage advisor, who is local and approachable makes a massive difference to the process and the speed you get your approval and shock of all shocks is usually when we tell people we lend up to €350,000 for residential home purchases.

It was a pleasure to have David Grincell from Fran Grincell properties with us last night and he got to chat to many people, looking to source local properties.

All told, it was a great night & the lemon drizzle cake was definitely a winner! We look forward to setting up another evening & some zoom sessions in May.