Everything you need before you walk into your first meeting with Jonathan Hale. Read it through, then head back to the simulation to start your stakeholder discovery.
Hi,
Jonathan asked me to brief you before your first session with him. He'll give you 28 minutes — I'd use them on strategy, not background. That's what this email is for.
Here's the situation. Meridian is a 103-year-old building society — mutual, member-owned, six branches, £2.8 billion mortgage book. We have a problem: our mortgage application-to-offer time is 23 days. The industry benchmark is 11. Digital lenders are doing it in 9. We're losing members who won't wait.
Jonathan has convinced the board to fund a digital transformation programme. £2.8 million. 18-month programme. First major go-live in 12 months. He's staked his credibility on this in front of twelve board members. That matters — it means he won't accept surprises, and he won't tolerate anything being kicked into "phase 2" without a proper conversation first.
I've run mortgage operations here for eight years. We have three core systems that don't talk to each other: a Salesforce CRM from 2017, an in-house mortgage processing platform built in 2011, and a third-party underwriting product called Caseware. Members submit documents by post. Offer letters are printed, signed, and posted. That's where 23 days comes from — not complexity, just queuing and paper.
A few things I'd want you to know going in. We tried this in 2019. A Big Four firm did a £400k discovery, produced a 200-page report, never spoke to a single front-line advisor. The board approved phase 1 in February 2020 — then COVID hit and it was shelved. Some people here are still sceptical about consultants as a result. Earn your credibility by listening, not presenting.
Rajesh Mehta (our IT Director) is the person whose technical judgement Jonathan trusts. Don't let any vendor near Jonathan without Rajesh having seen them. Alicia Forrest (Chief Risk & Compliance) will block anything that creates regulatory risk — involve her early, not at sign-off. And please, please talk to Dawn Fletcher before you make any recommendations about the advisor process. The 2019 project didn't. That's part of why it failed.
One structural constraint you need to know: the Caseware contract runs out in 22 months. If the programme scope includes underwriting, the decision to replace or renew has to be made within 6 months. Talk to Rajesh.
Jonathan's treasury team modelled the business case. The rough logic: £140 million in annual lending commitment loss due to 18% market churn over five years, discounted and adjusted for partial recoverability, gives a present value of around £14 million. The £2.8 million budget is approximately 20% of that. There is no contingency tranche — the board funded this once and the expectation is it gets delivered within budget.
The transformation is not a rebuild. The core policy system and underwriting rules are out of scope for replacement. Approximately 1,200 decision rules are embedded in Caseware, built over 11 years by risk and actuarial teams. Many are not fully documented. Changing the underwriting layer is an FCA-grade risk. The programme is about digitising the process around those systems, not replacing them.
Meridian Building Society was founded in 1923. It is a mutual — owned by its members, not shareholders. It has six branches, around 340 staff, and has been offering mortgages and savings products for over a century. Its identity is built on relationship-led service: real advisors, personal conversations, local presence.
That identity is now in tension with member expectations. The under-40s who make up the fastest-growing segment of first-time buyers expect digital speed alongside personal advice. When a Meridian mortgage takes more than twice as long as a competitor's digital product, members notice. Market share has slipped from 1.8% to 1.5% over three years. Jonathan wants it back to 1.6% within two years of go-live.
The three core systems don't integrate. The 2017 Salesforce CRM captures initial member data. The 2011 in-house mortgage processing system handles document management and ops workflow — by overnight batch, not real-time. The Caseware underwriting platform sits separately, with its own user interface and decision logic. An integration bus from 2008 ties them together (just about). Data moves between systems largely by overnight batch or by re-keying.
The result: a member who starts an application on Monday morning might not appear in the underwriter's queue until Wednesday. Document chasers work from spreadsheets. Offer letters are printed, signed by a manager, and posted. The member scans it and sends it to their solicitor by email anyway.
No advisor redundancies. Jonathan said this explicitly in the board. Meridian is a mutual — members and employees are often the same people. Any programme that removes jobs loses the board vote.
No branch closures. Same reason. Digital transformation means faster and easier, not online-only.
The underwriting decision logic is frozen. The ~1,200 Caseware rules were built by risk and actuarial over 11 years. Many are undocumented. Touching them is an FCA-grade risk. Scope the programme around them, not through them.
FCA / MCOB compliance is a hard gate. Alicia will not sign off anything that creates regulatory risk — and she's right not to. The audit trail, vulnerability flagging, and advice documentation requirements are not optional features to be added in phase 2.
The Caseware decision must be made within 6 months. The contract expires in 22 months. If the programme replaces underwriting, 12 months of migration is the minimum. That means the decision is now, not later.
The Big Four firm that did the 2019 discovery spent £400,000 producing a 200-page report. They spoke to Sandra and Rajesh. They never sat with a mortgage advisor, never watched a member walk through the process, never spent a day on the branch counter. The advisors found out through the grapevine and were against it before the recommendation was published. COVID saved the project from its own rollout.
Every senior person at Meridian remembers this. Some will be polite enough not to say it; Dawn won't be. You earn credibility here by listening more than you present, and by bringing the front line with you. Spend a day with Dawn's team before month two.
Jonathan will remember if you've read this brief — and if you haven't. Arriving unprepared to a 28-minute CEO slot is not a good start. Arriving informed and using the time to challenge, probe, and surface the things Sandra didn't write down — that's what a good BA does.
Head back and begin your stakeholder discovery — start with Jonathan for the strategic view, or Sandra if you want operational detail first.
← Back to Project Bridgeway