Sitting at my desk, pulling my thoughts together for my presentation to UK Finance's Digital Innovation Summit, I?m reflecting that, arguably, getting onto the property ladder has never been more challenging for young prospective home owners today. House price inflation combined with much slower wage growth and high rental costs has put home ownership beyond many people's grasp. Most people need help of some sort, whether Help to Buy or the Bank of Mum and Dad.  Shared ownership is also an option but perhaps lower down people's list of options - it all seems so complicated and hard to understand. 

Here in Northern Ireland, Co-Ownership supports first-time buyers (FTB) with shared ownership. It has always been popular and never more so than at present where it makes up one in ten FTB purchases. Last year Co-Ownership helped 1,015 homeowners, an increase of 27 per cent on the previous year.

So why is Co-Ownership so popular now? Over the past two years we?ve been undergoing a transformation both in terms of digitising what we do and how we engage with potential co-owners. Rather than waiting for them to contact us, we?ve put a small team on the road who attend events and go to areas where our customers are. This allows us to have good conversations at a time and place that suits the customer, helping them move into home ownership sooner. Our marketing team has a strong social strategy focused on debunking many of the myths about shared ownership and outlining the benefits.

We have also  redesigned our customer experience end-to-end. We leveraged the knowledge of the people who speak to customers, spent time understanding the issues our customers faced, picked the brains of some of the lenders we work, with and brought in Experian to help us with our decision making. Teamwork makes the dream work and the insights from this work enabled us to transform a clunky paper application and assessment to a simple online application taking about 20 mins to complete. This approach gave our customers more power to take control of their home purchase and increased the number of  customers coming to us directly rather than via a broker.

The results are beyond our expectations and at my session on 15 October, I?ll share some of our insights and experiences with the hope of giving you some inspiration in your own transformation journey.

The UK Finance Annual Mortgage Conference takes place on Wednesday 6 November. Topics will include The View from the Regulator, The Changing Shape of the Mortgage Market & Emerging Trends to 2025, LIBOR to SONIA transition, Mortgage Regulation, and Housing Supply. Visit the event webpage to learn more.