Specialist later life-lender, LiveMore, has made two new senior appointments as it continues to accelerate its growth, rapidly expanding its sales and broker support to meet growing demand.
Jon Sturgess (pictured) joins the team as sales director, with over 25 years of experience in specialist lending within mortgages and second-charge lending.
Sturgess is passionate and experienced in further developing the tools that brokers already have, and helping to fill the gaps for later-life borrowers as well as supporting mortgage prisoners.
Sturgess will use his proven track record in the industry – including his previous role as Head of Sales at Masthaven Bank, where he was instrumental in building the bank’s lending proposition – to aid LiveMore’s growth and support its later-life customers.
Prior to Masthaven Bank, Sturgess was head of sales at Magellan Homeloans, with other former roles including sales director at GE Money and head of sales at Firstplus Financial.
In addition, LiveMore has appointed Nina Harrison as partnership manager in the newly-formed growth team.
Harrison joins from an equivalent role within the commercial function of the Cabinet Office, prior to which she worked in business development at Penguin Random House.
Bridging the gap between marketing and sales, LiveMore’s growth function has been set up with the ambition of securing additional revenue, growing brand awareness and developing new routes to market outside of traditional channels – to enable the business to keep supporting more underserved, over-50s borrowers.
The appointments come at a pivotal time for the company, amidst the soaring demand it is seeing for over-50s interest-only mortgages, fuelled by the cost of living crisis, rising interest rates and a 40-year inflation high.
The additional direction and expertise will be vital to LiveMore in an exceptional period of business growth, having recently announced its expansion into the Scottish market, and a £275m senior funding line from NatWest Markets as its solution continues to gain ground.
Alison Pallett, managing director of sales, said: “We are thrilled to be welcoming two new senior hires to the team, as we continue to shake up the lending landscape on an increasingly bigger scale.
“Jon will assist in driving the LiveMore brand into the Specialist Lending arena, and enhance the product range of introducers with a suite of Later Life lending products.
“For the sales team, Jon’s skills and experience will help us to further widen our reach within this underserved market and help us with our determined ambition to get later-life lending to where it should rightfully be.”
Jon Sturgess, director of sales, added: “The market is vastly lacking in solutions for customers whose needs aren’t met by the traditional lending markets, and this is an area where specialist brokers can really come into their own for customers.
“The drive and enthusiasm of the LiveMore team to meet this gap that still exists was a huge part of what compelled me to join the business.
“I am looking forward to being part of LiveMore’s mission to reinvent access to later-life mortgages, whilst championing over-50s to have genuine control of their financial futures.”
