John Bannerman has been appointed to the role this week and will be responsible for the operation of the new team, which already totals 12 people at the company’s Glasgow head office and is expected to grow to 16 by the end of this year.

He joins from Santander UK, where he was head of complaints operations for retail banking, business banking, fraud and regulated advice teams across multi-site locations.

John said: “At Startline, customer services includes all of the activity that might be needed by customers during the life of their finance agreement.

“I have experience in customer services, contact centre and complaints environments across multi-channel customer platforms and I am sure that this experience will help as we continue the process of bringing the customer services function in-house.”

He is also overseeing the complaints team at Startline, which is being augmented with new staff in line with the business’s rapid expansion over the last year.

“The complaints team within Startline is already working well and my role will be to identify new opportunities to enhance how we deliver positive outcomes for our customers.

“I am really excited to have joined Startline just as it is going through a period of major expansion. I personally feel there is a great cultural fit with the business that is undoubtedly customer-centric in its approach and I am looking forward to building on that ethos over the coming months and years.”

These developments have seen Startline double its office space over the last few months with an additional 7,500 square feet taken at the company’s Skypark One headquarters.

Paul Burgess, CEO, explained: “Since our inception, we have outsourced our customer services function. However, we decided at the start of 2019 that the time was right for us to assume responsibility for our portfolio internally as the business matures.

“The move is giving us greater control over the customer journey and helping us to continue to drive our service standards. It is an exciting change and also a vote of confidence in the quality of staff that we are able to recruit in and around Glasgow, with the hiring process already well underway. We’re pleased to appoint John to support this development.”

Startline was recognised last month as Non-Bank-Owned Finance Provider of the year in the Motor Finance Europe Awards and was named among the Top 10 Fastest Growing Private Companies in Europe by Inc.com, an authoritative American news source.