Lending Director

LHV Bank, a fully licensed UK bank, specialises in Savings, Banking Services for global fintechs, and SME Lending solutions for UK businesses, offering commercial real estate investment and trading loans from £0.5m. As a leading provider of real-time multi-currency payments, accounts, acquiring, indirect scheme access, open banking, and FX solutions, LHV Bank supports 200+ fintech companies, including Airwallex, Currencycloud, Truelayer, and Wise, serving 10 million+ end customers and reaching a potential market of 500 million across the UK and Europe.

After obtaining its UK banking licence in May 2023, LHV Bank entered the retail savings market via deposit aggregators in August 2023, followed by the launch of its direct-to-customer retail banking proposition in December 2024.

For more information, visit lhv.com.

We are looking for a Lending Director to join us at this exciting time in our growth to support the lending requests of Real Estate and Real Estate backed trading businesses.

The Lending Director role purpose is as follows:

• Continue to build upon the Bank’s reputation as an active, creative lender and relationship banker in the SME market.
• Identify and establish sustainable relationships with new creditworthy clients, through key business introducers such as the Broker network.   

 Duties and responsibilities:

• Build and nurture LHV SME’s presence in the community with local business networks, leading to the acquisition of borrowers through established Brokers, Accountants and business contacts.
• Help to develop and implement the team acquisition & relationship strategy (incl. which relationships and networks to target, in what order, and assist with driving the lending volumes across a suite of products designed for SME customers.
• Be a “Hunter and Farmer”, with an appetite to build long-lasting relationships from the start.
• Manage the pipeline and diary being organised and a self-starter.
• Assess and recommend lending applications as first line of defence, write detailed Credit reports (inc detailed financial analysis) on complex cases to develop appropriate solutions and establish a strong working relationship with the Credit team.
• Motivated by success in numbers and driven to achieve individual and team targets.

Experience & Knowledge:

• Demonstrable experience in business development and sales within a commercial bank, with a strong history of providing high-value term debt solutions, ideally across real estate and real estate-backed trading businesses in the hotel and care sectors.
• Experience working with Brokers and other Intermediaries with access to SMEs.
• Banking qualification ACIB or equivalent is desirable.
• In-depth knowledge of Real Estate or Trading Business lending.
• Advanced Microsoft skills – PowerPoint / Excel & Word.

Skills & Behaviour:

Be able to Demonstrate:

• Strong communication (incl presentation skills) between key stakeholders, internally and externally.
• A commercial awareness, in relation to the external competitive market but also the requirements. and flexibility required of working within an SME organisation.
• Taking responsibility and ownership of work delivery.
• Strong customer centricity and appreciation of changes in customer behaviour.
• Acting as an advocate and setting the cultural tone for the wider organisation.
• Multi-tasking and prioritisation in a changing environment.
• High standards of personal performance in daily execution of tasks.
• Identifying opportunities for efficiency, cost reduction and continuous improvement.

Some of our benefits

•    Competitive salary & progression
•    Open and inclusive culture 
•    Hybrid working 
•    Fantastic offices and great working environment
•    Vitality Health Plan (includes private health insurance, travel insurance, gym discounts)
•    Medicash health plan (Level 3)
•    5% employer pension contribution
•    Life assurance
•    Income protection insurance
•    28 days holiday plus 3 additional days, bank holidays & further days for various key life events
•    Team socials