The 'headstrong' financial services professional who resisted an arranged marriage and pursued her career
While she harboured dreams growing up of becoming a Bollywood actress, Raji Sidhu-Housden (pictured) was destined instead for a successful career in the mortgage industry – today, as a business development manager at Nottingham Building Society for Intermediaries.
“Really, I should have been a Bollywood actress,” Sidhu-Housden recalled. “We used to have a shop – an off-licence, that was also a newsagent’s, a bakery, and sold fresh meat. We would have lots of Bollywood movies on and I used to get my uncles phoning up saying, ‘What are you doing in this magazine?’, because back then I looked like one of the Bollywood actresses, though probably not now, after having a child and working in finance!”
Her father wasn’t delighted when she shared her young ambition, Sidhu-Housden acknowledges. “My dad said, ‘You may as well just come up to me and said, ‘Dad, I want to be a prostitute because in Bollywood, that's how they see it – you’re just going to get exploited,’” she remembered. “I don't think I had the confidence for it. I was rather self-conscious earlier on in life.”
Sidhu-Housden did have the confidence, though, to refuse the prospect of an arranged marriage around the age of 20 (telling her parents that she wouldn’t go into a shop and buy a pair of shoes without trying them) and to stoically face the prospect of a potentially terminal tumour in her arm, at the age of 22. “I was okay with it,” she said. “It was out of my control.. I didn't mind going if I had to go. I was content, I'd been enjoying my life, I’d been to university to study psychoanalysis and sociology, and I'd done volunteer work in Romania. I was very independent, and I had done lots of things which I think most people hadn't done up until that age, or sometimes in their whole life.”
Thankfully for Sidhu-Housden and her worried family, it proved to be benign, but the way she dealt with it at such a young age says much about her early tenacity. “I think I've always lived in the sense of life's short, and living in the moment,” she explained. “I've been a little bit different from the outset in terms of going against the grain of the Sikh culture being projected onto me or being told what I am or what I should do, which is probably why I like the influencing and negotiating and challenging aspects of a BDM role. I'm quite headstrong. If I say I want that, I will get it - it's just that I need to want it bad enough to go and get it.”
After university, Sidhu-Housden considered becoming a therapist. But keen to start earning, she opted for a job selling used cars on finance. When she realised that clients were being charged exorbitant interest, she walked out. “I said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t sleep, I can’t do this anymore’,” she recalled. “If my heart’s not in something and I’ve lost interest, I don't care what's going to happen - I back myself. Sometimes, it's a fine line between confidence and arrogance. It's always about keeping the ego in check and trying to be humble.”
A second degree course – this time in law - and a job in a care home followed before Sidhu-Housden entered the mortgage industry a decade ago, firstly in business development, and then as a business relationship manager. Her current role at Nottingham Building Society for Intermediaries came up in 2024. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, I've just manifested my dream job – a London-based BDM’. That's what I kept saying,” Sidhu-Housden shared. “I went for it like it was mine already, and then it was. It's very suited to my personality. I like the autonomy, I like the relationship building, I like the networking and I do like the targets. I like a challenge - I go in all guns blazing.”
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The importance of relationship-building
Key to her role, of course, is fostering relationships – a skill that seems to come naturally to Sidhu-Housden. “There have been times when I've been sitting on a train with strangers,” she offers, “talking to a group of them around me and asking what they do, and I’ve said, ‘Right, get your phone, let's connect on LinkedIn.’ Everyone’s pulling out their phones and they're all connecting with each other. This is what I do - I will talk to people and network. There's always opportunities. On a personal level, I believe that you meet people for a reason. It is those interactions - we have a positive experience because it’s about that connection.”
The connection between BDMs and brokers is important too, Sidhu-Housden notes. “It very much comes down to how the personalities mesh,” she said. “I went to see a firm in the City and it was on one of the high floors of a building. I remember going up in this glass elevator and then meeting the gatekeeper, we'll call him, for the first time. I said, ‘Oh my, that's made me feel really dizzy.’ And he said, ‘Well, you know the solution to that, Raji, don't you? You don't have to come back.’ I replied, ‘Well, that's not an option because I'm going to be seeing you again.’ I don't take it personally. I've got a job to do and if you tell me I can't do something, I'll take it as a bit of a challenge. I'm a bit thick-skinned and I can probably thank my upbringing for that - I'm quite relentless.”
Even though she works in a corporate environment, Sidhu-Housden believes she is not very corporate. “I will get lots of brokers saying, Raji, you're not the typical BDM and I take that as a compliment,” she said. “I like to get on a level with them because that's the only way I can help. I'm very straight talking, which is why they do tend to like me because I won't waste anyone's time. If it’s not going to happen, I'll tell you from the outset. I do pick my battles wisely, which is probably why I'm good as a BDM, because I won't always take challenges to the underwriters. I can already gauge if it's just going to waste more time or rub them up the wrong way, and I'm always fixated on the result that I want.”
