SoMo has added four new posts across its departments to handle additional business.

The Manchester-based bridging lender says it has hired Laurel Livesey as an underwriter. Livesey has more than five years of experience in the finance industry and the firm says her appointment lifts its underwriting team to 12. 

It has installed Rachel Killeen in the newly-created role of valuations manager, where she will work alongside the company’s sales and underwriting teams to oversee property valuations. 

The business says her appointment “is the start of SoMo’s long-term vision to build its own specialist valuation panel”. Killeen joins from Together where she focused on commercial operations and brings 14 years of managerial experience in the retail sector.

Greg Applewhaite becomes the sales department’s newest relationship director for the Home Counties. He joins SoMo with six years of sales experience in the finance industry across secured and unsecured lending, and will be responsible for building relationships with brokers.

The lender adds that Damiano Lo Presti joins as a relationship executive, supporting its relationship directors, as well as maintaining the firm’s customer database. The new hires take the company’s sales team to 10 members.

SoMo senior talent acquisition partner Lindsey O’Neill says the firm’s valuation-only product and its second charge rates have pushed it to lend more this year than 12 months ago.

O’Neill adds that it was “important to strengthen our team” to boost growth and maintain customer service levels.