Spotlight on the underwriting team

Name: Chelsea Jones

Job Title: Senior Deal Placement

Team: Underwriting

How long have you been working for DSG?

I joined DSG fresh out of uni, so I will have been here for 10 years in October! I just stumbled upon the company and the industry, but over the years, I've built experience in different areas of the business. I've worked in the onboarding team, helping our dealer partners get set up. Then I moved into a Business Manager role in our sales department, which progresses the finance proposals from enquiry to payout. More recently, I had the opportunity to move over to Underwriting as a Senior Deal Placement. So, it's safe to say I've seen a lot of growth and change over the years and learned a lot about the Motor Finance industry.

What does a typical day in your life look like?

The underwriting department's goal is to get the best outcome for both the customer and the dealership that introduced the proposal to us, and we have a team of 13 people working hard to make sure that happens.

We process somewhere in the region of 500 new proposals a day for the group, and while many bypass our department and are automatically approved by our lenders, our team gets involved to assist with the applications that require some extra attention.

So, when there are discrepancies in the customer's profile, it's our job to make sure the puzzle pieces fit together. Sometimes it can be as simple as correcting a date of birth or matching the applicant's name with a slightly different name on their credit profile. However, in more complex cases, our team will liaise with the customer to obtain the extra information that is required by the lender.

Whilst we always aim to get a decision for the customer as quickly as possible, the lenders we work with have different service level agreement times and can have backlogs. Therefore, we always try to manage the expectations of both the customers and the dealers during this process.

The team use their expertise to propose applications to lenders based on the customers' requirements and circumstances. For example, if they are a foreign national or only have a provisional license, we know exactly which lenders to deal with to get the best chance of an approval.

What are the most frequent issues you see that slow down the approval process, and what are your top tips to help speed them up?

· Double-check the finance application before sending: We often see errors in the application, such as typos in the name or date of birth, that can result in our systems not being able to automatically match the customer with the correct credit profile.

· Check the name your customer has provided: Sometimes a customer will supply the name they go by in daily life, rather than their legal name. For example, if a customer applies as Bob, but his legal name on the electoral register is Robert, we may need to intervene manually to match the customer with their credit profile, which could slow the application down.

· Check if your customer has a full UK driving license: To avoid delays later in the process, it's always worth checking driving license status upfront. That way, we can match the customer to an appropriate lender straight away.

· Managing customers' expectations: We work with several lenders who may require different levels of information depending on the customers' circumstances. So, whether it's a younger customer who doesn't have an established credit profile or a non-prime customer, it can often take a bit longer and require more information to get an approval. By making your customer aware of this, it can encourage them to be more responsive to information requests and get a faster approval.

What value does the underwriting team add for the customer and our dealer partners?

There are loads of benefits for dealers when working with us! I think the biggest one is the time they can save, especially in more complex finance applications. The great thing for dealers is that we're working in the background to progress their customers' proposals on their behalf, freeing up their time to focus on sales. We keep both the customer and the dealer updated throughout the process.

Also, I think the experience and relationships we have with our panel of lenders add a lot of value to dealers. Our team has in-depth knowledge of the latest lending criteria, enabling us to get the best outcome for dealers and their customers in the most efficient way.