Beverley Building Society has appointed Simon Glass as head of new business lending.

Glass joined the society on 4 January and has previously worked for packagers in a variety of roles and for Santander as a branch-based mortgage advisor. Most recently, he supported the intermediary network as a business development manager for TSB.

He also has more than 20 years’ financial services experience – 12 of those in the mortgage world. As well as having handled significant change and technology/IT implementation projects for major high street names.

His new role at the Beverley will see Glass forging close working relationships with brokers, both regionally and nationally, and acting on their feedback by working with the society’s senior management team on new product and policy ideas.

As the society’s first-ever business development manager first and foremost, he will also contribute to product and policy development, and continuous improvement to the society’s lending processes and systems, helping to ensure that the society can directly act on the feedback he receives from intermediaries.

“I was ready for a new challenge,” says Glass, “and my role at the Beverley will certainly give me that.

“I’m passionate about mortgages and one of the things I love most is building relationships with brokers and seeing them blossom from nothing into something mutually beneficial.

“However, being involved in policy and product development as well will enable me to offer a 360-degree service to brokers, by helping to find solutions to the things they are telling me, which I believe is so important. The synergy this new job offers between relationship-building and being able to influence the solutions we bring to market, to meet brokers’ needs, was an opportunity I couldn’t say no to.”

Glass’s appointment is the latest step in the Beverley’s ongoing mission to prioritise brokers and demonstrate its serious intentions when it comes to lending more and catering for underserved niches such as later-life lending, mortgages for unusual and semi-commercial/mixed-use properties, and the self-employed.

He added: “The Society is the right size to be nimble, and now with dedicated resource supporting the intermediary market we need to think outside the box and respond quickly to what intermediaries tell us they need, and new developments in the market generally.”

The Society’s chief executive, Karl Elliott says: “Dealing with us is different in many ways, from our personal approach to manually underwriting every case, to offering direct access to our underwriters and our ability to think outside the box when it comes to lending decisions.”