The Dudley Building Society has appointed Paula Millard to the position of underwriting manager.

She joins from Royal Bank of Scotland where she headed up training for new underwriters and created the blueprint for their technical learning team, producing technical training modules for the whole mortgage process as well as training new and existing underwriters. She previously spent five years managing underwriting and customer service teams at the bank.

Millard will report to head of credit, Jonathan Moore, who said: “Paula’s experience of the underwriting role in a large organisation like RBS will be invaluable to us as we continue to develop our own underwriting capability in the wake of growing demand for our products and service.

“Her enthusiasm for lending and what she brings in terms of structure, when allied to Dudley’s commitment to assessing each case on its merits, will be particularly valuable. She is already making a difference.”

Millard said: “Dudley Building Society is a progressive regional society with strong roots in the West Midlands. As someone who grew up with local links, I am particularly delighted to be working on home ground as part of this very forward thinking team.

“My emphasis is to build on the relationships we have with our introducing partners and the importance of how, between us, we can cooperate to ensure that more enquiries turn into successfully submitted cases. I want to create a culture where our partners send in applications where our underwriters can make a lending decision on a first touch basis. This would mean that the vast majority of cases would move though to offer much more seamlessly, without further requests for information.

“Clarifying and tailoring our requirements for a particular case at the enquiry stage will create opportunities to provide a better customer service to our brokers.”