Branch Closure
Due to an electrical outage our Royston branch is temporarily closed.
Thank you for your patience at this time.
Meet the team
We are here for you
Our people are our greatest asset so we’d like to introduce you to some of them. If you’d like to meet more of our team why not pop into your nearest branch where somebody will be pleased to welcome you.
Biography
Charlie has been with Saffron for 7 years, and heads up the Marketing & Product team. Responsibilities include all promotions across B2B and B2C, brand, product development and customer insight. She has a passion for putting the customer at the forefront of all activity, an area that is echoed in the societies strategy and values. “Making a difference to the financial wellbeing of our customer base, whether a first savings account, planning for retirement or getting on the property ladder is what drives me to get up in the morning. Customers are at the heart of everything we do”
Please contact Charlie with all media enquiries.
Contact Charlie Townsend
- Tel: Ext: 1267 / 01799 582904
- Email: charlotte.townsend@saffronbs.co.uk
Biography
Christian has been with Saffron for 16 years after joining as Manager of the Ware and Royston branches. He is currently the Head of Facilities and Property after taking on this role in April this year. Christians focus this year is to drive the Facilities department to be focused on its customers who are of course Saffron staff and their working environments. He will also be working on a number of exciting projects from environmentally friendly vehicles to the review of the Head office buildings. “The variety of work within Facilities and the people we deal with make this a very rewarding role”
Contact Christian Draper
- Tel: Ext: 1302 / 07884 181404
- Email: christian.draper@saffronbs.co.uk
Biography
Claire Joined the Society in 2005 working in branch, moving on to support the Executive team as PA to the CEO, before making the case for and fulfilling the role of Community Business Partner. Claire’s role is to support and build strong relationships, understand community issues and support the society’s strategic goal of making a positive sustainable difference to the communities in which we have a presence.
We provide financial support, education, time and expertise to help the Society to achieve this. “Educating and providing essential tools for financial health is a top priority as well as grant giving via our Community Fund. Visiting those who we make donations to and seeing what they do first hand is both humbling and inspiring at the same time. I am proud to work at Saffron”
Please contact Claire for all community related enquiries.
Contact Claire Hunnable
- Tel: Ext: 1227 / 01799 582753
- Email: claire.hunnable@saffronbs.co.uk
- Branch: Saffron Walden
Biography
Claire has been with Saffron since January 2016 and has over 16 years’ experience as a recruiter, including being the Director of her own agency. She now leads the recruitment process at Saffron - her role is to attract, develop and retain quality talent for the society. Claire strives to make a positive difference to the society through its people. “I feel very privileged to work with some incredible talent at Saffron, and working together with my People team colleagues and forward thinking technology we’re able to identify and grow talent better than ever before.”
Please contact Claire to discuss our career opportunities at Saffron.
Contact Claire Jose
- Tel: Ext: 1319 / 01799 582892
- Email: claire.jose@saffronbs.co.uk
Biography
Karen has been with Saffron for 16 years, and has been in her current role as Vulnerable Customer SME for the last two years. She initially joined at 18 after doing work experience with the Saffron Walden County High School, and later returned in a full time position. Key responsibilities include supporting customers through their journey with Saffron, providing support to both customers and staff, and ensuring continuous training is provided and correct outcomes. "I am a big fan of Saffron and how we look after our customers in such a way they form part of our family. Talking, listening and helping customers and staff is really important to me which is why I enjoy this role and Saffron so much."
Biography
Kelly joined Saffron in 2005 as a Branch Manager and now heads up the Service & Sales teams including the branch and telephone channels along with saving and payments operations. Having worked within the front-line Kelly is able to use her knowledge and passion for customer service to ensure customers and our local communities are at the heart of all services we provide, no matter what channel.
Biography
Peter has worked with Saffron for the last 7 years and heads up the Property Development team. The team provides development finance to developers and small house builders to help them to fund residential housing developments, property conversions and refurbishments in loan sizes of between £500,000 and £3m. Prior to working as a property banker, Peter's earlier banking career was in retail and corporate banking with HSBC, before shifting to development lending around the start of the millennium. Since then, the house building industry has become a major passion for Peter and he is thrilled to still be in the industry and able to continue to add value to developers by calling upon his many years of experience.
"I am lucky in having a very experienced team of property lending bankers who work with me in my team at Saffron, and between us we work with our developer customers from the point in time when they acquire the land, through to the sale of the completed houses; and we are able to follow the progress of the projects by working with our panel of monitoring surveyors throughout this process. Recently we have found ourselves working in challenging times (our developers have found Brexit and Covid in particular significant recent issues which they have had to contend with) and so this close working relationship between developer and experienced banker has proven crucial to the success of the project. In short, we see this working relationship as a partnership, and something which our developer customers are very grateful for, as it sets Saffron apart from some of the other lenders in our niche lending sector."
Please contact Peter for any Development Finance enquiries.