UK specialist lender Connect makes new senior hires for “ambitious growth”
Connect for Intermediaries, a UK-based specialist lender, has made two senior hires.
Founder and CEO Liz Syms says the new hires will help deliver on Connect’s “ambitious plans”
Adrian Boxall is coming on board in mid-January as director of operations. The company says his remit will be “to help drive more efficiencies across the mortgage application process, particularly for the specialist lending and commercial markets”.
Boxall moves from SME-focused Shawbrook Bank where he spent seven and a half years, most recently as underwriting team leader.
Prior to that, he worked for nearly a decade at HSBC.
Alan Baldwin has also joined the firm as director of compliance. Baldwin moves from UK challenger bank Masthaven where he has served as compliance manager for one and a half years.
He also held similar roles at cash deposit platform Flagstone and equity release specialist Bower.
There was also an internal promotion at Connect, with Jim Selley, who joined the lender’s training team for advisers a year ago, promoted to director of training.
Connect’s founder and CEO Liz Syms says the appointments complete the company’s “plan for a really strong leadership team to kick off 2023”.
She adds: “Despite the question about market conditions, we felt it was very important to provide greater strength to these areas of the business so we can deliver on our ambitious growth plans.”
Founded in 1998, Connect has three arms to its business: a network, a packager, and an adviser business.
It focuses on specialist mortgages and financing, such as complex buy-to-let, residential and commercial, adverse credit, later life lending, bridging, development and second charge mortgage finance, unsecured loans, and expat and foreign-national mortgages.
