Snowdon eyes mortgage openings for Aldermore
Share
Colin Snowdon, Spearheading mortgage move
Colin Snowdon, former chief executive of Merrill Lynch sub-sidiary Wave, has been recruited by UK bank Aldermore to look into launching a UK intermediary residential mortgage lender.
Snowdon, who was behind the launch of specialist lenders The Mortgage Business and Britannia Building Society’s Verso, is spearhead-ing a potential move into mortgages that is likely to focus on the broker market.
Richard Spinks, who worked with Snowdon as Wave’s director of product development and credit, has also joined the Aldermore team.
Aldermore was launched last July and created through the mer-ger of private bank Ruffler Bank and Base Commercial Mortgages.
It offers commercial mortgages, asset finance and savings products.
Snowdon says: “I was delighted to be asked to take a closer look at the mortgage market on behalf of Ald-ermore which, as a retail funded bank, is well positioned to develop a residential lending proposition.”
The announcement comes as several other lenders gear up to enter the mortgage market.
Sandy Chen, banking analyst at stockbroker Panmure Gordon, star-ted the ball rolling last week with a fundraising exercise to drum up money from institutional investors to set up a retail bank called Walton & Co. It is understood the bank plans to offer residential mortgage lending at an ave-rage 70% LTV. The focus will be to operate a conserv-atively run bank to small businesses and affluent spearheading mortgage movefamilies with more than £45,000 in liquid assets.
Each property will be personally inspected by someone from the bank, and it is believed the bank will only lend what it holds on deposit.
No decision has been made on whether the bank will work through brokers.
Metro Bank, operating under the slogan “love your bank”, is believed to be on track to launch as planned in the next three months.
Tesco is also expected to launch mortgages and current accounts within the next year.
If you enjoyed this article, sign up here to receive daily email updates from Mortgage Strategy and Follow @mortgagestrat
