The Deep Business Centre has welcomed an ambitious new tenant which plans to grow from three people to 20 in its first year, and many more beyond that.
Freya Cross, Business and Corporate Manager at The Deep, is confident that innovative use of technology will ensure a bright future for HOOCHT., one of only a handful of digital mortgage brokers in the UK.
Freya said: “HOOCHT. is typical of many new businesses in that it is harnessing technology to provide new solutions which reinvent traditional business sectors. But the company is not only the first within The Deep Business Centre to offer a super-fast mortgage service – it’s one of the first in the UK!
“We have seen our tenants make a huge difference in such fields as personal finance and motor insurance by taking technology to new levels. From starting here with just one or two people they have built national networks employing hundreds between them. That’s great news for our region in terms of employment and profile, and we look forward to helping HOOCHT. make the next breakthrough.”
HOOCHT. is the brainchild of Beverley-born Rich Wynn, a time-served mortgage broker who has worked for major players including London & Country and Barclays and has already built MortgageCube, a highly successful telephone-based brokerage.
Rich believes the traditional ways of offering mortgage advice, face-to-face and over the telephone, will be obsolete within five years. His alternative is a high-tech business which meets the evolving needs of clients and which also pays an amount from every procuration fee to Parkinson’s UK.
He said: “We will take the drudgery and repetition out of the mortgage application process, while the other, important aspects of the relationship between us and the customer will still happen, including offering them appropriate advice. In this way, we can reduce a typical application process from potentially several hours to 15 minutes.
“People are used to completing instantaneous transactions, usually via their smartphones, for everything from buying their supermarket shopping to booking a holiday. Up to now, financial services just haven’t been able to keep up with such expectations, but that’s all changing. The technology is available and we are going to be among the first businesses to offer people the kind of mortgage service they want, how they want it.”
Rich sees Hull as the perfect place to set up a new business because of the positive profile projected nationally from City of Culture and reinforced by operating in a business centre so closely associated with an iconic tourist attraction.
He said: “There is so much vibrancy and creativity going on in Hull and the surrounding region at the moment, it feels like an ideal setting for a cutting edge fintech business like ours. I want HOOCHT. to be an employer of choice, with a fun and rewarding ideas-based environment, and one of my ambitions is to create dozens of new jobs over time."