Paragon has made a number of new appointments in its asset finance business.

Jan Greenhalgh has joined the organisation as head of new business in asset finance.

She will be focusing on delivering, speed, consistency and accuracy to the SME market, through deployment of ‘operational excellence’ activity, which in turn, drives service excellence for customers.

Greenhalgh spent 18 years at the Royal Bank of Scotland and held senior posts at Lombard in corporate, commercial, Lombard Asset Management and invoice finance.

Meanwhile, additions to the sales team offering finance through brokers include the appointment of business development managers Ian Beattie, Michael Molyneux and Vajinder Bal. They are joined by assistant relationship managers Yanko Dimitrov, Chris Harpley and Cara Chirgwin in this broker channel.

It comes shortly after the appointment of Anup Sangha as head of credit for asset finance at the specialist lender.

Richard Doe, managing director of commercial lending at Paragon, said: “Over several months, we have made a series of appointments across asset finance to build up this area with experienced people who can expand our capability and improve our customer journey. This underlines our commitment to invest as we increase our lending to British businesses and broaden our product reach.”

Paragon’s recent first quarter trading update showed a 56% increase in lending by Aasset finance to £93 million, compared to £60 million in the same period last year. There has also been an expansion into new products including aviation finance and soft asset financing.

Greenhalgh said: “Delivering a good customer experience is important to every business and something that we prioritise at Paragon. I’ve had a lot of experience in bringing about operational excellence and I am working closely with teams on our end to end customer journey.”