Advising Thame business owners on their mortgage and insurance needs.

Mortgage advice and protection solutions for business and individuals.

CoBi Ltd represented Mortgage Advice Bureau - one of the UK's leading mortgage brokers with around 950 expert advisers covering the UK. As principal of a new start business I was proud to have recruited and developed a great and successful adviser team and secured clients for them to work with. Clients came to us as their original adviser had left MAB or did not offer protection advice. My team provided continuity for these existing MAB clients and forged strong and enduring relationships. We offered protection and mortgage advice to benefit clients and enhance MAB network profits. We had a particularly strong protection ethos with skilled protection only advisers specialising in High Net Worth clients, business protection and client retention. Our core mortgage and protection team worked to a high standard and as regional partners of MAB we sought to develop the team to their fullest potential. We often "grew our own" advisers and in 2016 Hayley won Best Newcomer at the British Mortgage Awards - testament to our academy programme.The great scope of opportunity within MAB drew me in. My software background and analytical mind allowed us to develop tools to enhance our niche. My people person skills allowed the opportunity to reach across the MAB network for new clients. My powers of persuasion allowed me to recruit and develop an award winning team.

As business principal I managed day to day operations of our Yorkshire Building Society agency. We transacted face to face business on behalf of YBS serving local clients seeking savings accounts, ISAs, Bonds etc.We became locally famous for our great client service, and had year on year growth of deposit since our inception. We regularly scored 100% on mystery shops and A Grade audits and took pride in great client service with consistently high Net Promoter Score results.Core qualities that I delivered to my team were a strong compliance focus, good ability to lead and motivate my team, personable demeanour to quickly build trust with clients.YBS are a great brand with great values, and the good people of Aylesbury became friends as well as clients.

I wanted a new challenge away from manufacturing that played to my main strengths as a persuasive people person with a great eye for detail. Financial services struck me as being ideal so I sat the CeMap exams and started to live the dream. I built a sizeable client bank and experienced year on year growth in this role, one that I enjoyed greatly. As an appointed representative of Legal & General it gave me great insight into the financial services market, working for a small business that represented a FTSE 100 business.I especially enjoyed spearheading projects where we re-connected with clients where the prior adviser had left Legal & General. Good for clients and good for profits.

Having worked in the manufacturing sector for a while I had the skills to start my first business and took the plunge in 1999. Our new start business quickly established dominance as the UK's premier broker of pre-owned plastic processing machinery primarily through early adoption of the internet as a sales channel.In turn we grew to becoming successful UK agents also for manufacturers of robots and factory automation equipment from Europe and the Far East. I learned a fantastic amount about running a business in this time, from forming and managing a sales team to partnering with overseas suppliers, inventory management and finance, and after sales support for capital machinery.We experienced year on year growth until recession of 2009 at which time I left the business. By this time STV had gained success as a brand with loyal clients and continues to this day.

As UK sales manager I headed up a sales team of 20 across UK and Ireland. My role was to develop increased sales and I was successful in achieving year on year growth in this role. I worked closely with suppliers in Germany and Italy to ensure our team's technical knowledge was developed fully and to work on product innovation and marketing campaigns specific to the UK market.This was a very varied role encompassing people development, supplier relationship management, client management. I worked closely with internal finance, support and engineering teams to ensure we exceeded targets on volume and profitability and grew our client base.I established and grew the used machinery division considerably, and developed systems to allow us to price pre-owned machinery from our brands as well as others. This enhanced our trade in market and in turn grew new machinery sales.

This leading plastics processing machinery distributor sponsored me whilst at University. I had 6 month work placements across all departments - IT, finance, engineering, service and support, and finished in sales. They offered me a job in technical sales because I understood the manufacturing environment and happened to be great with people from engineers to CEO's. My full time role in sales on leaving university involved solving complex manufacturing problems for SME's as well as blue chip companies primarily in automotive, medical and packaging sectors. Equipment solutions I sold ranged from £10,000 to £1m+ In 1996 I was the top seller from a team of 20 and experienced year on year growth in this period until promoted to work in the head office.