Fosters Financial has appointed two non-executive directors to its board.

Headquartered in Colchester, and with offices in Ipswich, Clacton and Sudbury Fosters Financial has appointed Peter Basford and Alison Beech with immediate effect.

Fosters Financial’s mortgage advice proposition covers residential, buy-to-let, and retirement, as well as bridging and commercial, while in the protection space it offers critical illness, family income benefit, home insurance, landlords’ insurance and private medical insurance.

Basford has worked for over 30 years with Lloyds Banking Group in retail, group audit, private banking and commercial, with the majority of these in senior leadership positions. He left in 2018 to start up his own business providing support for SMEs.

He now has a broad portfolio of companies he helps and guides, including being a founder of The Innovation Labs, Stowmarket which provides co-working space and support for the digital sector.

Beech is in her fourth decade of working in financial services. After college, she joined Guardian Royal Exchange in Lytham, qualifying as an Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute. Since then she has been involved in a variety of businesses and has experience in growing, developing and transforming businesses, including leading national chartered surveying business with a £12m turnover, setting up a new mortgage lender, and working as a mentor and adviser to a London based PropTech start-up.

Whilst with GRE, she was MD of their third-party mortgage administration business, after which she became the group’s UK HR director, then joining the leadership team of a pan-European online mortgage broker. After this she ran her own consultancy alongside which she held a role as a non-executive director for a Ministry of Defence agency involved in a major HR management transformation.

John Foster, managing director at Fosters Financial, said: “The appointment of a non-exec director is a big step. As a business we are at the point where this is the right thing for us to do. I am really pleased with the level of experience and knowledge that Peter and Alison bring to the board.

“Allowing someone in, to know warts and all is an extremely big step but I couldn’t be happier with whom I have chosen to share this intricate detail with.”