Led by CEO Gil Ulrich (pictured above, centre), director Jonathan Hitter (pictured above, left), and Stephen Benson (pictured above, right), Blue Shield has had a busy summer, completing over £55m-worth of new loans across five deals to take its lending this year alone to over £150m.

Blue Shield uses capital from its own balance sheet to deploy funds and prides itself for its speed and flexibility, two key attributes for what is required to excel in a challenging lending market.  The company has big plans to continue to build its book and to take advantage of the market dislocation in the lending space.

Although the business is internally funded, it has received many approaches from external funders and it sees no reason why the business cannot grow to a £1bn loan book as it widens its product offering.

Currently, Blue Shield specialises in larger bridging loans, starting from £4m, and lends across all asset classes, including operational assets.  The company has aggressive plans to continue to grow its loan book, and has recently moved office while also growing its team in anticipation of this growth. Flexibility is key to Blue Shield, and the company knows that in a competitive environment, borrowers look for lenders who can offer creative solutions.

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Recent loans provided by Blue Shield include an £8m acquisition loan on a West End office building, a £16.7m development exit loan on a new build 22 apartment scheme in Nine Elms, a £14.3m loan on two office buildings in Southgate, a loan of £12m on a residential portfolio in the North West, and a £12m loan on the iconic One Croydon office building, having just financed the building’s acquisition for an Irish developer.  The office building had achieved planning consent for 250 apartments.

Gil commented: “Since we set up Blue Shield Capital almost four years ago, we are proud of how we have served the bridging community and become in such a short space of time one of the go-to lenders for larger bridging loans, an area that has been woefully underserved by lenders. We have spent the last two years building both our reputation in the market and our team for the next phase of our growth.”

Jonathan said: “In this current lending market, borrowers and brokers want to work with lenders who have a can-do attitude and look to provide solutions to problems rather than walk away from a deal. The feedback we are receiving from the bridging community is that brokers and borrowers want to work with us and appreciate our flexible approach, which is shown by the number of borrowers who come back to us for repeat business.”

Stephen added: “Today we are a specialist lender in the bridging space but with our strong financial backing, we see ample lending opportunities as we look to grow our loan book.  This will include larger loans of £30m-plus and alternative offerings such as development finance and term lending.”