Spicerhaart has made a key appointment as it plans to grow its mortgage business.

John Phillips, 51, former financial services director of Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward, has joined Spicerhaart’s senior management team.

Phillips becomes national operations director for financial services and lending partnerships at Spicerhaart after 23 years with KFH, where he grew the financial services division from three to 80 advisers.

Before KFH he was with Winterthur Life, the life insurance subsidiary of Swiss banking group Credit Suisse.

Phillips said of Spicerhaart: “I’ve admired the company from afar for many years and am looking forward to the challenge of making a highly successful company even more successful.”

Here is Eye’s mercifully short, but rather striking, history lesson.

Winterthur Life, which sold endowment mortgages via its estate agency network, was a previous backer of the company that is now today’s modern and expanded Spicerhaart in a highly complex arrangement.

Winterthur never owned agents, but it did fund them, on contracts that were expensive to get out of.

In Spicerhaart’s case, it backed the company formerly known as Spicer McColl in a £24m deal involving 240 haart branches in 1998, which were bought from Woolwich.

When Winterthur called in receivers on Welsh firm Darlows in 2000, Darlows was then acquired by Spicerhaart.

And when Winterthur Life abandoned endowment mortgages, it no longer needed its tied distribution network of agents, which also at that time include Reeds Rains.

With help from a changing market, Spicerhaart got out of its contract with Winterthur three years ahead of schedule in 2008, paying off its £45m obligation.