Just Mortgages has announced the appointment of Michele King as the firm’s new head of learning and development.
Michele brings more than 30 years of experience across L&D, talent management and strategic planning within the financial services sector. Throughout her career, Michele has developed and deployed extensive learning solutions, academies, training programmes and apprenticeship schemes, supporting colleagues at every level of business. She has a proven track record of developing managers and senior leaders, as well as enabling colleagues to achieve their full potential.
Michele began her financial services career as an adviser herself, before moving into a training role. She has spent the majority of her career with Countrywide, starting in L&D as a senior training officer. This included the retraining of around 1,000 team members ready for the introduction of mortgage regulation. In May 2007, Michele moved to the estate agency division as head of management development, before becoming leadership development consultant – delivering a leaders programme for future business leaders.
She became head of learning and development in 2018, leading a team of L&D professionals and responsible for training and developing over 3,000 employees across sales, management and leadership. Most recently, she was head of curriculum delivery at Simply Academy, developing and managing its apprenticeship programme.
In her new role with Just Mortgages, Michele will be working with the L&D team to expand on its successful proposition. Her remit will be to provide enhanced support to every level of the business; from the Just Learning proposition and academy programme, through to inductions and continuous professional development of existing advisers and managers across employed, self-employed, new build and Just Wealth divisions. She will also use her vast experience to implement a key management leadership programme.
Michele King said: “It’s clear that the L&D team and proposition at Just Mortgages has been hugely successful and with big ambitions, there are exciting times ahead. This is a fantastic opportunity to take the tremendous work that has been done so far and really build on it, adding my expertise and fresh set of eyes to help expand it to best support our colleagues and the wider business. I’m keen to engage with all stakeholders to bring L&D and the wider business closer together - making sure we are one seamless business where everyone plays an active role, everyone shares the same high standard and all colleagues feel supported to succeed.
“I’m really looking forward to getting stuck in, working across the entire proposition and in all areas of the business to realise the full potential of this successful team, while identifying and adding fantastic new talent.”
John Phillips, CEO of Just Mortgages and Spicerhaart, adds: “Our L&D team and proposition has long been an integral part of our success. Not only has our academy created some of our most successful advisers, but the ongoing training, mentoring and development has ensured colleagues continue to set the standard for quality advice and customer care. Above all, it enables us to offer a platform where regardless of your position, you have the opportunity to fulfil your full potential.
“I am thrilled to appoint Michele as our new head of L&D, someone who comes with huge amounts of experience and a real track record of creating pathways, developing colleagues and nurturing future leaders. She will be a tremendous asset as we look to execute our ambitious growth strategy for the entire business, leveraging the incredible success of our L&D team and our company-wide proposition.”
Just Mortgages currently has more than 650 advisers across the country, with more than 150 employed advisers in estate agency branches nationwide, and nearly 500 self-employed advisers. All team members gain access to ongoing training, mentoring and support, as well as the learning and development team. Alongside in-person and remote training sessions, advisers can take advantage of its digital learning platform which offers hundreds of modules covering everything from sales and product training, to marketing, lead generation, leadership, compliance and wellbeing. These are all available to everyone across the business at any time.
