Chris Pitt of First Direct: ‘We’re the best unfound bank in Britain’

C hris Pitt had an unusual start to his banking career. In the middle of a history degree at Loughborough University in the early 1980s, the working-class lad from east London’s Upton Park found himself with a holiday job usually earmarked for trustworthy retirees: handling cheques worth millions of pounds. “When I couldn’t get any jobs, my grandma and one of my great- uncles got me job as a messenger.

You used to walk between banks in the City with paper cheques,” says the chief of internet bank First Direct. Pitt claims he was never tempted to take the money and run. “You’ve got to remember I’m a Jesuit schoolboy.

It’s not in my DNA to do that,” he grins. It was that dependability that helped him climb the ladder at HSBC, where, more than 30 years after his cheque-shuttling years, he is now running its branchless retail bank, First Direct. Launched in 1989 by Midland Bank, First Direct was the UK’s first telephone-based lender, offering then-revolutionary around-the-clock service to customers accustomed to a branch network that operated from 9am-4pm only on weekdays.

First Direct was bought by HSBC as part of its acquisition of Midland in 1992, and launched internet banking alongside its telephone service in 2000, more than a decade before fintechs such as Monzo, Starling and Revolut burst onto the scene. Pitt’s route to the executive chair was unconventional. While bouncing between high-profile marketing roles at lenders including HSBC and Tesco Bank, he gained a reputation as a steady hand before applying for the First Direct chief executive role in 2020 on a whim.

He clinched the job – which bosses had been trying to fill for a year – within a week of applying, and took the helm in October that year. CV Age 55 Family Married to Tracey for 29 years. Two grown-up sons.

Education The Campion school, Hornchurch. History degree from Loughborough University. Pay Undisclosed.

Last holiday Widemouth Bay, Cornwall. Two weeks walking the coastal path with wife and puppy. Best advice he’s been given Be kind.

Biggest career mistake The curse of the introvert – not finding my voice quickly enough in new situations. Word(s) he overuses Genius. Spot on.

Story. How he relaxes Reading. Cycling.

Swimming. Walking. K nowing how to peddle a bank’s brand will come in handy: First Direct aims to more than double its 1.

5 million customer base by 2026 after years of low growth. That will involve appealing to a younger customers ranging from 18-35, which would be a huge shift given that two-thirds of its users are over 46. First Direct has not done much to lure new customers and the point is not lost on the former marketing boss.

“We’re the best unfound bank in Britain,” Pitt says. “But we’re unknown. That’s the problem.

We need to get better at social media and telling our story to those younger people. ” Assuming financial market fluctuations do not scupper his plans, that will mean promoting its savings account with at least 3. 5% interest, and mortgages worth 90% of the value of a home and up to six times a borrower’s salary.

But first, Pitt will have to weather the storms brewing for existing customers. Borrowers are not only grappling with surging living costs, but the market turmoil that followed the government’s disastrous mini-budget and accelerated a surge in mortgage rates . First Direct was not among the lenders that pulled hundreds of mortgage products off the shelf amid the market meltdown, but has raised its interest rates in line with the market to an average of 6%.

Pitt says his team was inundated with calls from customers concerned about what the plunge in the pound and bond prices meant for their loans and savings last month. He had to draft staff from other parts of the business to take thousands of queries as borrowers tried to lock in lower interest rates on their mortgages. “We basically coalesced everything we could to make sure we could get as many people on the phones,” Pitt says.

First Direct’s finances are not broken out from the HSBC Group, and its mortgage book is folded into the wider UK bank. However, HSBC as a whole was the UK’s sixth-largest mortgage lender at the start of the year, with a £114bn mortgage book accounting for about a 7. 3% share of the market.

Pitt was concerned for a “small number” of customers who might start falling behind on their mortgage payments, but says he was prepared. “We’re trying to get ahead of the curve. ” He has already doubled the size of the team dedicated to aid struggling First Direct customers, either by referring them to specialists or restructuring their debts.

While staff are reaching out to vulnerable borrowers, he says that one of the biggest challenges is that some customers do not identify themselves as such. And understandably so: many have never faced a cost of living crisis that put their finances at risk. “These people either do not recognise themselves in this space, or do not have the skills or the resilience to think about that,” he says.

Pitt says the chaos has died down, and he has been sleeping well since. But if the past month has proven anything, it is that First Direct’s telephone banking service is here to stay, despite competition from digital lenders such as Monzo and the growth of online banking. First Direct has seen a 40% reduction in telephone calls over the past two years and says 98% of transactions are done online.

“When you get into a point of crisis, people tend to reach for voice,” Pitt says. “And the reason this business works is that it absolutely tries to wrap itself around people to support what they want to do. ”.