Francesca Smith is a Research Officer at the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, where she works on understanding and improving the experiences of people with mental health problems in the mortgage market, and across debt collection more broadly. She is the author of the Institute's report, 'No place like home: Supporting people with mental health problems in mortgage difficulty', published at the start of this year. Before joining Money and Mental Health, Francesca completed a BA in Geography at the University of Cambridge, where she studied the relationship between health and housing. Francesca has lived experience of mental health problems, and is passionate about eliminating the stigma around such conditions, and especially among marginalised groups.

Charles has over 25 years financial services experience and joined UK Finance in August 2020. As Director of Mortgages he has overall responsibility for delivering the mortgage policy work of UK Finance.

Prior to joining UK Finance, Charles was Executive Director and Chief Risk Officer at The Nottingham Building Society where he was accountable for designing and implementing the Society’s risk strategy and framework. Charles brings with him a wealth of experience including time as a director in the Regulatory Financial Services Practice at Grant Thornton LLP and 11 years regulation and compliance experience at the FCA. Whilst at the FCA, Charles was Head of Department for the mortgage sector, where he developed the FCA’s approach to the supervision of the UK mortgage market and oversaw the implementation of both the Mortgage Market Review and Mortgage Credit Directive.

James has over 25 years’ experience in housing and financial services economics and analysis. Joining the Council of Mortgage Lenders in 2003, which merged into UK Finance in 2017, he has continually developed the mortgage industry’s rich data assets, creating a world-leading knowledge base for the sector. Leveraging these assets and his two decades of industry and data knowledge, James has overall responsibility for UK Finance’s mortgage sector analysis and authors many of its publications, including our flagship Household Finance Review.

Prior to settling in financial services James held a range of academic, public and private sector roles in economics, interspersed with sabbaticals to lose himself in various interesting corners of the world. He has now mostly grown up and is married with two mostly grown children and two mostly grown dogs, all of whom believe they are superior economists to him.