Access Financial Services has appointed Sue O’Brien as its new training and competency manager.
O’Brien will have a key compliance-focused role within Access FS and will be responsible for ensuring all advisers and relevant staff are properly qualified, skilled, and competent to provide mortgage and protection advice without risking poor customer outcomes or regulatory breaches.
She has a long pedigree in mortgages and protections having joined Access FS from the Finance Advice Centre where she worked for almost seven years as a mortgage and protection adviser as well as in training and development.
Previously, she worked as a mortgage and protection advisor at Mansion Park. Before that she was a manager of operations at Bamford Mortgages – and the director of operations at Hadenglen Home Finance, where she was responsible for a team of 34 mortgage administrators.
In her new role, O’Brien will work alongside Mark Prudhomme in the training and development team. She will report into head of training and competency Paul Bartliff – although the training and development team ultimately reports into compliance director Jeremy Lock.
Nick Jones, mortgage sales and marketing director at Access FS, said: “While we focus on hiring experienced mortgage brokers, we now have over 200 mortgage and protection advisers at Access FS and we need to provide a lot of great training not only to maintain the quality of our advice but also to help them develop their businesses and become more successful. While Sue will be involved with our in-house Broker Academy, which prepares new recruits for the CeMAP qualification, even the most experienced mortgage brokers need to maintain their skills amid changing products, rates and rules. Training is critical here and Sue will be absolutely central to its delivery.”
Sue O’Brien commented: “I am looking forward to looking at the Access policies and potentially redesigning the processes that are used to assess and monitor the competence of advisers, including for new entrants and experienced advisers. But I will also be involved with supervision and assessment, training delivery and coordination, recruitment and onboarding, record-keeping and reporting.”
Jeremy Lock, compliance director of Access FS, added: “We needed to bolster the T&C team following the promotion of Michael Harrison to compliance manager recently. Access FS always looks to support our mortgage adviser community and part of that involves a commitment to training them – with a view to helping them grow their own businesses.”
