For anyone that doesn’t belong to the financial industry, it can be hard to understand the daily role of someone within the profession.
Here’s where our commercial manager Matt Gammond comes in… with a background in Journalism and a vast career in the financial sector, Matt now acts as a skilled account manager at Velocity Bridging and deals with our extensive broker network that stretches from Scotland down to Cornwall.
For those who aren’t familiar with the role, we thought we’d shed some light on what a typical day looks like at Velocity Bridging for our commercial manager. Here’s what he had to say:
Like so many, my working day has changed so much over the last 12 months. Whereas normally I’d split my time between our head office and my home office, all of a sudden I found myself WFH for the entire week.
WFH has its positives of course; my wallet was thrilled with how little I was spending on petrol, but it brings with it challenges and that meant I had to rethink my working day.
Before logging in:
I like to wake up an hour before work starts, even when my commute is only about five feet from the bedroom to the home office. I spent my teen years rising after lunchtime but that is the old me and now I’m very much a morning person.
The day starts with the most important job; making sure my dog is fed and watered. It’s become very clear since we bought him that this is his house and I’m merely a tenant with my rent paid in the form of belly rubs and strolls around the park.
Frankly, I can’t crack on with any work if he’s in a mood, so I do my best to cheer him up early doors. And whilst he sinks his teeth into whatever canned delights Tesco have provided I sort the second most important job – the first brew. I’m quite sure I’m solely responsible for keeping the local dairy in business.
Start of the working day:
It’s just during this first cuppa that I check my inbox. A commercial manager’s job isn’t straightforward and usually involves a number of varied tasks that require a myriad of skillsets but the lion’s share of my effort goes towards securing new business and cultivating relationships with my introducers.
I’d like to think I do a good job of this and I always ensure that responding to any new enquiries or questions is the day’s priority. This is a people business at the end of the day and you reap what you sew. If you maintain your service levels and actually take an interest in other peoples’ days then they will be more inclined to send deals your way. Although, I apologise if I’ve called you just as you’re taking the first bite of your sandwich at lunchtime.
Lunchtime:
Ah, lunchtime! Or dinner. That debate has been rumbling on since I started at Velocity and I doubt we’ll ever see an end to it! I could sit here and say I ensure I’m eating a healthy, nutritious meal every day to fuel myself for the rest of the afternoon but that would be a lie. Although I am partial to a chicken salad!
Afternoon:
The rest of my day is spent liaising between the numerous other people that a bridging lender works with, whether that be our legal and valuation partners or maybe even the borrowers themselves. My job is to ensure cases move from enquiry to completion as quickly as possible, and if that means I need to step in and answer questions, read through a report or help our underwriters with their workload, then so be it. Then again, it’ll be some time before I will want to read another soil report!
Should my day actually be spent in our head office then the above still applies, although there’s no longer a need for Zoom calls and I can work safely in the knowledge that my dog won’t bite my shin if he gets bored!
The office environment will always be my favourite – you just can’t convey everything you want to via video chat. It’s important as a small company that we maintain that sense of comradery and I do believe it leads to things being sorted even faster than they would normally – which is already fast for us!
The day usually wraps up with a summary of the last eight hours’ events and a plan of action for the coming day. It sounds like a cliché but bridging finance is different every single day and that’s one of the reasons I love it so much. You can prepare as much as you like but you never know what the day will throw at you. You’re always on your toes and that’s where I like to be!