West One Loans is embarking on a major recruitment drive as part of plans to make market share gains in both the residential and second charge markets.
West One has created two new senior positions under Marie Grundy, managing director of residential mortgages and second charges.
Grundy remains responsible for driving the overall strategy for both residential and second charge lending but will be supported in the day-to-day running of both divisions by Pauline Rylands and Paul Huxter.
Rylands, previously national sales manager, has been appointed head of specialist distribution and will provide dedicated resource and support to packaging partners across both residential mortgages and second charges.
The lender is also in the process of recruiting several key account managers to help Rylands deepen its relationships with key packagers.
Broker support manager Lizzie Fonsecca and her team will continue to support Rylands and will gain additional resource as part of the lender’s expansion plans.
Huxter, previously head of clubs and networks, becomes head of intermediary sales and distribution, and will oversee a newly created field sales team, which the lender is currently recruiting for.
In his new role, Huxter will continue to manage West One’s club and network partnerships but will also now take responsibility for residential mortgage club and network broker firms.
To support him, West One plans to recruit several new regional account managers as well as increasing the number of telephone business development managers to support the field-based team.
The first recruit, David Venn, previously national account manager at Tandem Bank, joined this week as regional account manager for the South East.
Over the coming months, the lender will also introduce enhancements to its products, pricing and criteria in a bid to achieve its ambitious growth plans.
The first of those changes sees West One overhaul its legal process.
Going forward, West One’s fast track remortgage service is available for a low cost fixed fee of £99, positioned as an alternative to “free Legals” products.
It is also available on unencumbered properties for the first time, remortgages of up to £750,000 for borrowers in England, Wales and Scotland, and for both like-for-like and capital raising remortgages up to 90% loan-to-value (LTV), including debt consolidation.
The fast track remortgage service is also available at a lower cost for mortgages under £400,000 using the lender’s dual representation legal service as well as for borrowers using separate legal representation.
Marie Grundy, managing director of residential mortgages and second charges at West One Loans, said: “This is an exciting new chapter in our ambition to drive exponential growth in both our residential mortgage and second charge business.
“The past 18 months have provided us with a fantastic opportunity to learn and test our residential mortgage proposition and now the time is right to put the pedal down.
“Over that time we have been working closely with our brokers to understand their priorities and their needs and now we feel we are in a position to ramp up our offering in this area. To do that, we need to grow, which is why we have embarked on such a major recruitment drive.”
She added: “As well as this commitment to growing our team over the coming weeks and months, we will also announce a number of major product and criteria changes that we believe will create the most competitive product proposition in the specialist residential and second charge markets. Watch this space.”
