The Intermediary – July 2026 - Flipbook - Page 58
Meet
eet The Team
Lendco
endco
(FROM L TO R) JAMES PHILLIPS, GRAHAM PALMER, JAMES DOGGETT, BEN PIKE, NATALIE SPEER AND HARRISON REEVE
The Intermediary meets the business development team at Lendco
How and why did you
become a BDM?
James Doggett (JD): I worked for six
years at a specialist buy-to-let (BTL)
brokerage, which gave me really
good undersanding of the market.
Using those skills I was then able to
make the move to the lending side.
Natalie Speer (NS): Having began
my career as a broker, I worked closely
with lots of business development
managers (BDMs) and experienced
first-hand the difference a great BDM
can make. The move to a lender felt
like a natural progression.
Harrison Reeve (HR): Before moving
into the lender side of the industry,
I worked as a mortgage broker for
several years, which gave me a
really valuable understanding of the
challenges brokers face. The more
I looked into it, the more being a
BDM appealed to me. I enjoyed the
relationship side of broking and
the problem-solving element of
structuring cases. Becoming a BDM
felt like the right next step.
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The Intermediary | July 2026
James Phillips (JP): After studying
CeMAP, I started out working as a
specialist broker, but then decided
I wanted an easier life. Five years
later, whether or not being a BDM
is an easier life is still yet to be
determined!
Graham Palmer (GP): I was a broker
previously, and could see how I
would change things to make the
lender and broker relationship more
fruitful. I therefore joined Lendco in
2021 and have been working to that
end ever since!
What brought you to
Lendco?
NS: Lendco’s value of commonsense lending and the specialist
criteria really appealed to me as
I knew it would mean we could
provide a solution for a wide range
of scenarios.
HR: What attracted me to Lendco
was the ambition and direction of
the business. It was clear from the
outset that this was a lender with
significant long-term growth plans
and a genuine appetite to establish
itself as a major player in the market.
What makes Lendco
stand out from the
crowd?
Ben Pike (BP): Making deals work,
it’s not just a ‘system says no’
decision. We are in the industry
to lend money, and therefore
establishing the positives against the
negatives is key when inviting in new
business. Brokers like their BDM to
think outside the box, and to support
them for the whole journey from
application to completion.
JD: Our willingness to lend, we look
at every case with a can-do attitude
and will always try to find a way to
make it work. In a market that has
it’s challenges it’s so refreshing to be
part of a lender that’s always looking
for solutions.
JP: Not acting like most other
lenders! Treating deals on their
