Since announcing his departure from HTB in March, Lorenzo has turned his attention to increasing CapitalRise’s presence in the bridging market, as well as improving its proposition in the space. B&C spoke with him about his plans to achieve this, as well as how the prime central London (PCL) and wider bridging markets look from his perspective.

“CapitalRise has always done bridging in its remit — it's just a question of how it's been portrayed to the market. What I'm coming on board to do is to make that a lot clearer,” said Lorenzo.

He went on to explain that a key task would be to redefine and refresh the lender’s current proposition and products.

“We're not trying to reinvent the wheel here. What we're doing is refining the products we already have and making them more distinctive to the market, so that you can see us as a bridging provider as well as everything else that we do.”

The firm is also looking to evolve and gradually increase its reach nationally, expanding out of the PCL market and into the Home Counties, South West, South East, and the North.

Diversifying assets is something that’s on Lorenzo’s radar, while maintaining the company’s appetite for prime markets and exploring opportunities in commercial areas, including hotels, light industrial sites, and mixed-use assets.

For Lorenzo, additions like these, as well as stabilisation loans, will be key to help the firm's widen its reach.

“If we're looking at what my intentions are, it’s basically making sure the broker market knows we're the go-to provider for bridging. That's my key objective.

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“And not only just for bridging, but also as an end-to-end solution provider in that short-term space.”

For Lorenzo, CapitalRise has an advantage in the PCL market simply because the space is not as deeply inhabited by bridging lenders. But while PCL may bring opportunities and can often be perceived as its own economic ecosystem, Lorenzo noted that it still felt the impacts of world issues. However, for the bridging market, this is not always a negative.

“In a good market, people want money; in a bad market, people need money. You've probably seen a lot of distressed assets over the past 12-18 months, but that's someone else's opportunity.

“I would say you're not seeing as much of that going into 2025, but all the underlying factors that are going around the world at the moment do have an impact on people's decision making.”

For Lorenzo, even a distressed asset has its own buyers: “In adversity, there's a light at the end of the tunnel for those investors out there who've got money.”

Noting potential across the market, Lorenzo said that the commercial space was an untapped area, but one that many don’t have appetite for.

For this type of asset, Lorenzo explained that gearing was vital, as well as a thorough understanding of the asset class and a clear and plausible exit strategy through a high-street provider or specialist challenger bank.

“It's about making sure that someone can take us out with these types of assets, so gearing is everything. You have to understand that type of asset as well, and not everyone has that experience,” said Lorenzo.

Going into CapitalRise, Lorenzo was keen to take the lender further into the sights of brokers and the market as a whole. He saw his new role as an opportunity to work for an agile and nimble lender with strong funding and the ability to navigate the bridging market.

Along with his experience and insight into the bridging space, he felt he had something in particular to offer CapitalRise and the market as a whole.

“What I bring to the table is transparency and integrity. The accounts that have worked with me over the years know my relationships with them, and they trust that relationship as we take it forward under the CapitalRise banner.”