OSB Group has made a series of changes to its senior management structure as it looks to offer more bespoke broker support across its three brands, Precise Mortgages, Kent Reliance for Intermediaries and Interbay.
Simon Cockerill, previously head of intermediary sales development, has been promoted to group head of intermediary sales, now managing both the office-based and field BDMs.
“We want the brokers to understand there’s various different ways we can support them, depending on what their preference is,” Cockerill explains in a Mortgage Strategy interview.
“Broker behaviour changed post-Covid – there’s a lot more hybrid working. My role is to bring all of the support together to make sure that we support brokers in the way that best works for them. We’ve got video conferencing, we’ve got live chat, it’s the broker’s preference, but we still have that small bank feel.”
Meanwhile, Emily Hollands will take on a wider remit in her role as group head of distribution, managing key corporate accounts of networks, clubs, specialist distributors and packagers. She will also head up the high net worth and retention teams. She will also manage four newly created key partner roles.
“The main motivation is to enhance our relationships,” Hollands tells Mortgage Strategy.
“We’ve always done that well but the last couple of years have shown us how important it is that we know these firms from the ground up and we work collaboratively together to enhance both their and our business.”
Marc Callaghan will continue as head of specialist finance but with a greater focus on the bridging and commercial markets. All three will report directly to OSB Group intermediary director Adrian Moloney.
“We have always been focused on service levels and we’ve built up a sizeable sales team in telephony of about 50 people but the field sales BDMs in Kent Reliance and Precise now also report into Simon to make sure he can work much more closely with them in 2024,” Moloney tells Mortgage Strategy.
“Marc Callaghan will report into me, specialising in commercial and bridging – we’ve just split the sales team into specialists in those subjects, so we have four commercial specialists, as we see more brokers diversify into commercial, and three bridging specialists.
“It works to have subject matter experts on the team.
“We’ve got 90 people working for us on the sales team across the different divisions, probably the largest of the specialist lenders. We only deal with brokers so we really invest our time in making sure they have the right support and we want to enhance that further in 2024.”
