National brokerage Just Mortgages has boosted its self-employed management team in the north with the appointment of Tara Catnott as area director.
Based in Sheffield, Tara will be coaching and supporting self-employed advisers across the region, all while looking to expand her team with ambitious new recruits. Tara brings nearly 15 years of experience across financial services and has a proven track record of finding and developing new broker talent. She will work closely with her team to support their day-to-day activities, to help execute their business plans and to connect them with relevant training within Just Mortgages.
Having joined financial services from school, Tara started her career in admin and underwriting roles within secured lending and later mortgages. Tara followed her ambition and self-studied for her CeMAP qualification, landing a trainee adviser role within William H Brown and quickly climbing the ranks to senior mortgage adviser. She was later headhunted to join Freedom 365 – a partnership between Freedom Mortgages and MAB – as mortgage sales manager.
In her most recent role, Tara was head of sales at Echo Finance, helping to grow the business from a team of five employed advisers to 45 self-employed advisers across the UK. Alongside day-to-day support, Tara was tasked with recruitment, onboarding, training and both policies and procedures.
Tara is the latest addition to the self-employed division at Just Mortgages, strengthening its team of area directors and managers across the country. Adding extra experience and expertise to the team enables Just Mortgages to support its nearly 500-strong team of self-employed advisers.
Tara Catnott said: “Joining Just Mortgages is a great opportunity for me to share my passion for coaching and developing advisers. Coming up as a self-starter with little experience, I know myself the obstacles many advisers face and understand the difficulties of the job. It gives me a strong perspective to help encourage new recruits and those looking to scale their businesses.
“Having prior experience running academies, inductions and training, it’s great to know that Just Mortgages has dedicated teams in place to cover all this and give advisers the support they need. I’ve been so impressed with my own induction and the willingness of every department to give my team their full support. I’ve never experienced anything like it before and it makes me really excited to get stuck in.”
Ben Allkins, head of mortgages and protection at Just Mortgages, added: “One of the biggest strengths of our self-employed structure is an experienced management team that has walked the walk as advisers. This is hugely valuable for our advisers as they look to launch and scale their own businesses. Adding Tara to the team with her wealth of experience is a fantastic way to strengthen that proposition.
“Her skills in recruitment will be a great advantage too as we continue to see strong demand for our self-employed proposition and look to grow the division to 500 advisers and beyond. With the right people in place and ongoing access to training, mentoring and support with sales, marketing and compliance, we can meet our goal of providing a true launching pad for ambitious advisers.”
To support their expansion, self-employed advisers can enrol on additional licence courses with Just Mortgages, or even access their business principals programme. This provides the relevant training and mentoring to expand their own teams and build both their leadership and management skills.
Across its employed and self-employed divisions, Just Mortgages has more than 650 advisers nationwide.
