Hampshire Trust Bank hires portfolio management head for specialist mortgages

The lender said that the appointment was part of its “continued strategy of helping support a broad range of professional property investors, including those with large or complex borrowing requirements”.

In her role, Ledgard will set up and lead the portfolio management team in the specialist mortgages division and work with broker partners to “safely manage and monitor large or complex exposures” within the company.

She will report to Chris Daly, HTB’s managing director for specialist mortgages.

Ledgard joins from Aldermore where she worked for over six years, most recently as head of portfolio management for property.

Prior to that, she was at Nationwide for around seven years in various roles including senior lending manager and senior recovery manager.

She has also held senior roles at Salt Commercial and Cheshire Building Soiety.

Daly said: “It’s great to have someone of Nicola’s calibre joining us at HTB. She has extensive experience and a track record of success within residential and corporate real estate lending, and she is the ideal person to set up and lead our new portfolio management team.

“Our specialist mortgage lending has proved extremely resilient despite the issues that the mortgage market as a whole has faced over the past year and our new portfolio management team will only strengthen our operations as a whole.”

Ledgard added: “I am delighted to be joining HTB, during what is an interesting period within the mortgage industry. It’s a great opportunity to establish a best-in-class portfolio management team from scratch.

“I’m very much looking forward to getting to know my new colleagues, rolling up my sleeves and getting stuck into the exciting task ahead of me.”

HTB has been growing its teams in recent months, with Russell Higgins joining as development finance lending manager, Harry Bhogal as its lending manager for the development finance division, Mike Kilford as sales manager for its middle ticket specialist equipment asset finance division and Andrea Glasgow as specialist sales director.

Marcus Dussard, who was sales director, left the firm earlier in July after three and a half years in the role.