West One Loans has restructured its team and will embark on a “major recruitment drive” to grow its residential and second charge market share.

The lender has created two senior positions under Marie Grundy (pictured), managing director of residential mortgages and second charges at West One Loans.

Grundy will drive the overall strategy for residential and second charge lending, with Pauline Rylands and Paul Huxter maintaining the day-to-day running of both divisions.

Rylands will take on the role of head of specialist distribution and will offer “dedicated resource and support to packaging partners across both residential mortgages and second charges”.

She has worked at West One Loans as a national sales manager for around five years, and before that, she was a business development manager (BDM) at Mint Bridging.

Prior to that, Rylands worked at Yorkshire Building Society for nearly 23 years.

West One Loans said that it was recruiting several key account managers to help Rylands “deepen its relationships with key packagers”.

The company said that broker support manager Lizzie Fonsecca would continue to support Rylands and have “additional resource[s]” to back its expansion plans.

Huxter will take on the role of head of intermediary sales and distribution, overseeing a newly created field sales team that the firm is hiring for, managing club and network partnership and overseeing the residential mortgage club and network broker firms.

The firm said that it was planning to recruit regional account managers and up the number of telephone BDMs to support the field-based team.

David Venn, previously national account manager at Tandem Bank, will be regional account manager for the South East and work alongside Steve Mannakee, national account manager at West One Loans.

West One Loans revamps legal service

West One Loans said that, in the coming months, it would make a number of “wide-ranging enhancements to its products, pricing and criteria in a bid to achieve its ambitious growth plans”.

The first of these is changing its legal process, so going forward, its fast-track remortgage service is available at a low-cost fixed fee of £99.

It will be available on unencumbered properties for the first time, along with remortgages up to £750,000 for borrowers in England, Wales and Scotland.

The fast-track remortgage service can also be used on wide-ranging enhancements to its products, pricing and criteria in a bid to achieve its ambitious growth plans.

West One Loans added that the service will be available at a lower cost for mortgages under £400,000 using the lender’s dual representation legal service, as well as for borrowers using separate legal representation.

The legal work for this service begins on receipt of applications, as opposed to when the offer is issued.

We want ‘exponential growth’ in resi and second charge

Grundy said that this is an “exciting new chapter in our ambition to drive exponential growth in both our residential mortgage and second charge business”.

She said: “The past 18 months have provided us with a fantastic opportunity to learn and test our residential mortgage proposition, and now the time is right to put the pedal down.

“Over that time, we have been working closely with our brokers to understand their priorities and their needs, and now we feel we are in a position to ramp up our offering in this area. To do that, we need to grow, which is why we have embarked on such a major recruitment drive.”

Grundy said that, along with its commitment to grow its team, it would be making a number of “major product and criteria changes that we believe will create the most competitive product proposition in the specialist residential and second charge markets”.

The lender recently launched into shared ownership and Right to Buy sectors and widened its residential range to Scotland.

In an interview with this publication, Grundy said that West One Loans wanted to offer products throughout the mortgage lifecycle.

Anna is currently the deputy editor for Mortgage Solutions and editor for Specialist Lending Solutions. She has worked as a journalist since 2019, having secured her Gold Standard NCTJ diploma from News Associates in a fast-track six-month course.


She started her career as a report at specialist publication The Insurance Insider covering a wide range of areas before joining Mortgage Solutions and Specialist Lending Solutions in 2021.


In her role, she helps put together and structure the news agenda for the day and writes up press releases, reports, interviews, analyses and exclusives across both titles. She also commissions blogs for Specialist Lending Solutions and hosts online masterclasses and in-person events across the business.


She has been shortlisted for three journalism awards, which include BIBA Journalist and Media Awards Scoop of Year Award in 2020, Headline Money Mortgage Journalist of the Year Award (B2B) in 2022 and 2023.


Prior to being a journalist, Anna worked in ecommerce across Snow + Rock, Cycle Surgery and Runners Need websites, and before that worked at specialist financial PR firm Rostrum.


In her spare time, Anna enjoys reading, seeing live music, and cooking for friends and family. When she gets a chance, she also enjoys hiking, skiing and indoor rock climbing.