Headquartered in Colchester, and with offices in Ipswich, Clacton and Sudbury, the Appointed Representative (AR) firm joins JLM with immediate effect, integrating 16 members of staff who will offer a range of mortgage and protection services.
Fosters transferred from Essex-based mortgage solutions provider Stonebridge Group in what was described as a ‘smooth” transference of business.
John Foster (pictured), managing director at Fosters Financial, said: “Joining a new network can be an arduous task but we are very pleased to be a JLM AR firm and to begin working with the team there to develop our proposition and our reach across East Anglia and into London.
“Within JLM we get all the resource we need, but there is a strong level of autonomy in how we run our business which means we can make decisions quickly and move in the direction we want to move in, all with the backing of the network. We have strong ambitions for this business and are looking forward to working with JLM so that we can realise them.”
Fosters Financial’s mortgage advice proposition covers residential, buy-to-let (BTL), and retirement, as well as bridging and commercial, while in the protection space it offers critical illness, family income benefit, home insurance, landlords’ insurance and private medical insurance.
The company hopes to recruit and retain more advisers, and take advantage of the support and resources on offer from JLM to “grow its proposition further into new and existing product sectors”.
Foster Financial said it was also keen to develop its apprenticeship programme which currently has four apprentices working in both advice and administration roles.
Rory Joseph, director at JLM Mortgage Services, added: “Forward-thinking firms like Fosters Financial are not ten’a’penny in this industry, so we’re delighted to be able to bring John and his team into the network, where we have no doubt they will thrive.
“There is a real level of innovation in this business and a focus on technology which means services like our virtual adviser offering will fit neatly into their proposition.”
JLM Mortgage Services is a mortgage, protection and wealth management network established in 2002 and currently has 74 advisers spread across 14 appointed representative (AR) firms, with offices stretching from Aberdeen to Brighton.
In May this year, JLM also added newly-launched lender OakNorth to its provider panel.
