He joins from Absolute Return Investment Advisers (ARIA), where he was head of compliance, and prior to that, he was head of mortgages and compliance at Cooper Associates for five years. In this role, he established the firm’s compliance academy. 

Lock has over 20 years of experience in the financial services sector, mostly in compliance, and worked as a mortgage and protection adviser at Key Solutions Mortgages for six years. 

Lock said: “I’m looking forward to sharing my commercial approach to compliance across the business, helping drive it forward and achieve our ambitious goals for Access FS.

“Before I entered the world of compliance some 10 years ago, I started out in the 90s as an estate agent and then became a financial adviser, so I’ve been on both sides of the fence and can understand the pressure points on either side.” 

Karl Wilkinson, CEO of Access FS, said: “Top-level compliance is critical to how we develop the business. We’ve experienced strong, steady and continuous growth since we started up in 2017, and Jeremy will be instrumental to the continuing success and integrity of the business.

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“Jeremy’s 10 years running compliance training academies will also prove invaluable right across the business, including for our administrative staff, our employed and self-employed advisers and senior management. Training is the bedrock of what we do here, with our Access Academies seeing a doubling of entrants in 2024.” 

Earlier this year, Access FS widened its offering with the addition of Sharia-compliant lender Nomo to its lender panel.