Lean Service Forum at Vellmore Building Society

Thirty-four members from 27 organisations joined us at Vellmore Building Society's operations centre in Bristol. It was the society's first time as host, and a week later it became the forum's hundredth member.

The morning began on the mortgage operations floor. Two years ago a typical application passed through eleven handoffs between brokers, underwriters, valuers and administrators, and brokers chased the society on almost half of all cases. Vellmore's operations director explained how her team mapped the journey with brokers in the room, then reorganised underwriters and administrators into small teams that own an application from start to offer. Handoffs fell to four, and the average time from application to offer dropped from 19 days to 11.

Members were most interested in what had not worked. An early attempt to automate broker updates had produced more calls, not fewer, because the messages described internal stages that meant nothing to brokers. The society rewrote them around the questions brokers actually asked.

In the afternoon peer clinic, members brought six live problems. The one that drew the longest discussion came from a university admissions team facing a surge in clearing enquiries, and three members who run seasonal peaks offered to visit.

Thank you to Vellmore Building Society for hosting, and to everyone who brought a problem to the clinic.