Dudley Building Society has added two senior hires to its leadership team, appointing Jayne Roberts as Head of Lending and Richard McDonald as Brand and Communications Manager, effective August 2026.
Richard McDonald, brand and communications manager and Jayne Roberts, head of lending at Dudley Building Society
Roberts joins from Skipton Building Society, where she built experience across mortgage origination and underwriting. In her new role she will oversee Dudley’s lending function, including the development of its mortgage proposition and what the Society describes as an ambition to expand its specialist lending expertise. Richard McDonald moves from Lloyds Banking Group, where he spent two decades, most recently leading marketing for Halifax Intermediaries and BM Solutions, two of the UK’s larger intermediary mortgage brands. He will take responsibility for brand, internal and external communications, and stakeholder engagement.
Rob Oliver, Distribution Director at Dudley Building Society, said both appointments “reflect the direction we’re taking as a Society and the importance we place on having experienced people leading key areas of the business.”
Specialist lending in focus
Roberts’s comments in the release are the most substantive signal of commercial intent. She noted that the specialist lending market “continues to evolve” but that sound underwriting depends on experienced human judgement rather than automated decisioning alone. That framing is deliberate positioning for a mutual that competes primarily on service quality and underwriter accessibility rather than price or technology scale.
Specialist lending in the UK, which covers complex income profiles, self-employed borrowers, near-prime credit and unusual property types, has attracted growing attention from both traditional building societies and newer non-bank lenders. Larger specialists such as Precise Mortgages and Pepper Money, alongside challenger banks with intermediary-facing mortgage desks, have expanded their broker distribution in recent years. For a mid-sized mutual such as Dudley, the competitive advantage lies in manual underwriting, direct broker relationships and a willingness to consider cases that fall outside automated criteria.
Brand and mutual identity
McDonald’s appointment addresses a separate strategic need.
AI level 1 of 5: written by Darlyn Ho; AI helped with tone, structure or wording; edited and signed off by Mark Walker, Editorial Director. What the levels mean
