Richard Higgs has been appointed to the newly created role of chartered financial planner at Suttons Financial Advisors. He brings 18 years of experience in financial services to the role, and joins from Equilibrium Financial Planning, where he served as an associate financial planner. Higgs worked there for just over a decade, after holding numerous roles at Bank of New York Mellon. The appointment comes after Suttons acquired Whitewall Financial Planning earlier this year, expanding its client base and increasing its assets under management to £300m.

Barclays has made several enhancements to its mortgage policies to allow for customers to borrow more when buying a home. The lender has made three key changes covering self-employed, interest-only and buy-to-let (BTL) customers. Barclays will now accept 100% of profit after tax (PAT) in its affordability assessments for self-employed homebuyers and has also reduced the minimum loan threshold for PAT acceptance. On interest-only mortgage applications where there is at least £500,000 in equity, the lender has increased the maximum LTV to 75% LTV. For BTL new build properties and flats, Barclays has raised the maximum loan size from £500,000 to £550,000 between 60% and 75% LTV, and 70% and 75% LTV respectively.

Aldermore has appointed Oli Watts as commercial director of structured finance within its business finance leadership team. In the newly created role, Watts will lead the bank’s expansion into structured funding solutions for SMEs, with a focus on asset-backed transactions. He brings over 25 years of financial industry experience, and joins Aldermore from ABN AMRO, where he held the role of managing director for asset-based finance UK. Watts started his career as a management accountant and progressed into senior leadership roles in finance, including finance director at RBS Invoice Finance and NatWest Commercial and Corporate Banking. He then went on to switch into customer-facing business leadership roles, such as head of client management, invoice finance at NatWest.

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