The results showed a 39% rise in asset finance drawdowns to a record £89m, while in property finance, drawdowns saw a third year of consecutive growth, climbing to over £285m.

B&C spoke exclusively with Richard Hanrahan, CFO at Cambridge & Counties (pictured above), to discuss the bank’s advances over the past 12 months.

On the firm’s surge in gross new lending, Richard said: “It's probably no great surprise that the majority of that growth came through real estate. So, of the 15% [rise] we saw last year, 9% (just over £285m of it) came through real estate.”

“Broadly, 60% of our book is in commercial,” said Richard.

The firm has grown its activity in London, the South East, and the South West from its strength areas in the East Midlands, the North West and parts of Yorkshire.

This is partly due to now being able to lend up to £15m across a wider geographic spread.

In asset finance, the bank saw a 39% uptick on drawdowns partly attributed to the launch of its product ‘asset flow’, and opening a new hub in Reading in September last year in a bid to take a slice of the action in what Richard sees as a hot-bed region of the market. However, he is still hungry to continue the success.

“I would be disappointed if we didn't see growth of over 50% in terms of new lending to asset finance in 2025,” he said.

Amid an annual report of rising numbers, the firm was happy to see at least one decrease, with the cost of risk falling from 67bps in 2023 to 42bps in 2024.

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For Richard, many of the cases on the firm’s provision coverage were legacy transactions from companies struggling to recover from covid, with the bank taking its time to clear these and carrying a slightly higher risk in the meantime, with clients then happy to refinance or restructure these loans.

Having only started at the bank last September, Richard felt that he had inherited this achievement, and something which the bank should be proud of.

“We're very comfortable that the underwriting criteria and the strong discipline we've got across the front lines has meant that we haven't got a great swathe of customers who are struggling to make their repayments, even against the backdrop of a higher interest rate environment,” stated Richard, “which I think alongside the growth is probably the biggest success in our results in 2024.”

While Cambridge & Counties continues to see its real estate, commercial, and asset finance numbers grow, the business aims to diversify further into areas such as bridging.

“We've got an extremely strong liquidity base; we’re in excess of the regulatory ratios similar with our capital base, so there's room, there's desire, there's passion to grow.”

He continued: “We see bridging as another product we can kind of build out to add to the already strong real estate portfolio we've got.”

While 2024 proved to be successful, Richard felt that the coming year had more in store for Cambridge & Counties.

“If you look at where we've got to, we've been around 12-13 years. The bank’s built scale, it’s been well run, it's got a low cost of risk, it's got high liquidity, high capital, a strong customer presence.

“So, it's a really exciting time right as we go into 2025 and beyond.”