Member Article

Together recruits new commercial operations manager

Specialist lender Together has appointed a new commercial operations manager to its growing commercial team.

Lesley Gardner joins from RSA, a leading general insurance company, where she worked for 30 years; holding a series of customer-focused roles and leading multi-product teams, streamlining the company’s processes and improving customer service. Before joining Together, she was continuous improvement manager at the insurer.

At Together, Lesley will apply her skills to enhance the company’s commercial operations, spanning auction finance, bridging finance, buy-to-let and commercial mortgages.

Lesley said: “I am delighted to join the team at Together, which is an ambitious and growing business that genuinely cares about its customers. This is an exciting new opportunity for me to apply my skills in a different area of financial services and to help ensure we deliver the best customer outcomes as the commercial business expands its operations.”

Irene Thomas, commercial operations director at Together, said: “Lesley brings extensive expertise in project management and will be a great asset to the commercial team as we move forward with our ambitious growth plans. We’re committed to continually improving and enhancing our processes, and Lesley will play a key part in this.”

The appointment follows a series of additions to Together’s commercial team since the start of the year as the lender widens its distribution and extends its product offering. Recent changes have included new lower bridging rates, increased maximum loan sizes on buy-to-let mortgages and quicker online processes for applications from brokers.

Together has a current loan book in excess of £2 billion, and total annual new lending for 2016 stood at just under £1.1 billion.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Together .