This month seems to have been a busy month for HR departments. HML the Skipton based mortgage processor has been changing the top team with the gifted Julian Wells moving out and the moving in of Andy Wiggans from what was left of the old Bradford & Bingley. Even stranger is that the news on the grapevine is that HML are looking in the market for a Commercial Director which is the role Wiggans now occupies!
The lovely James Chidgey from Nationwide is looking forward to his new role in the New Build sector. I suspect everyone thought this would be the start of Chidgey creating a new build team like Halifax has but alas no, Chidgey is the team.
More moves at LSL where Mark Graves takes over at Pink Home Loans following his spell as sales director and achieving significant uplifts in cross sales from the sleepy network. That leaves Dave Copland in the role of Director of Mortgage Services or in other words no team but a remit to talk to lenders a lot. I do hope this is a significant enough role for Dave ‘Pink’ Copland.
Stranger goings on at Personal Touch where it looks like they did a quick search of the market for a new chief executive following the departure of Doug Crawford. There must have been a lot of interest in the role but strangely the decided to cut short any search for an external candidate and appoint one of the incumbent non-exec’s to the role in the form of Max Wright. I have seen such moves before in financial services business where an existing non-exec gets the top job and I am yet to see want that works out for the individual and the company. I guess the PTFS members will have their own view.
More and more goings on at Tiuta with another round of redundancies. How many times can one firm make a round of redundancies? Concentrate on the funding and your distribution guys as the feeling out there is you need to refocus on the external world.
In last month’s Blog I did have a go at claims management firms which a felt might have been a little harsh. However that feeling went altogether when FOS announced that 5600 false complaints had been made for PPI. The answer is simply start charging for complaints where a claims management company is involved.
I went along to Mortgage Expo this month and all the signs were positive. The number of exhibitor stands was roughly double the number from the previous year and the number of brokers attending the expo was up on last year. That combined with a scorching hot day at the Lancashire Cricket Ground Venue made for a very pleasant and worthwhile day out. Well, beats being in the office anyway.
