B&C spoke to TAB’s CEO Duncan Kreeger (pictured above) to find out how the half-a-billion-pound investment would allow the lender to “make a splash” in the commercial arena and bring the speed of bridging finance to high-street lending.

“We really want to fuel the high street. We feel that the high street has been forgotten — there are loads of properties around hundreds of thousands of high streets in the UK where the big banks just don't have the appetite, the flexibility or the infrastructure to be able to lend money to people on the ground,” said Duncan.

He explained that TAB had already dipped its toes into the waters of the commercial sector around 18 months ago, but now it planned to make a larger impact on a market that he saw as potentially having £50bn worth of originations, dwarfing his estimate of £5bn in the bridging sphere.

Despite this potential, he felt that only a small number of lenders had the risk knowledge to create suitable products, or the speed to work at bridging pace.

TAB offers commercial interest-only mortgages of up to five years, lending up to 75% LTV on residential and 70% on commercial property. Duncan stated that, through this offering, the firm had so far gathered over £350m of lending on commercial property since its inception in 2018.

However, with the new £500m backing from CarVal, Duncan hoped that TAB would be able to provide more sustainable, longer-term lending solutions than bridging could offer. These would allow borrowers to extend a loan once a property started producing income, but without the typical mortgage wait times.

“If we're lending to the same borrower and it's a first charge to a limited company on a commercial property on the high street, it shouldn't take five times as long to agree a five-year interest-only mortgage than it does a one-year bridging loan.

“Mortgages at bridging speed is really what we hope to achieve.”

Having gathered plenty of experience in the market, Duncan felt now was the right time to dive deeper into longer-term mortgages.

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“It's time to make a splash. We've evidenced that we know what we're doing over a long period of time.”

Duncan said the company aimed to build a long-term commercial mortgage solution delivered at bridging speed, driven by advanced technology and AI-assisted lending decisions — an area where he believed the firm had led the way in the sector.

Additionally, he saw opportunities for open banking, building real-time feedback loops, and ultimately capturing TAB’s own proprietary data and other data sources to deploy funds to borrowers quickly.

“What we really want to do is get money into the hands of borrowers faster.

“Being able to underwrite loans faster and more accurately, taking into account market intelligence that typically an underwriter wouldn't be looking at on their own, is something that we'll be talking about much more.”

As the firm deploys its investments, it plans to make an impact on high streets across the country, deploying up to £5m per customer as well as £5m per single asset.

“We really want to be cheap enough to appeal to a wider audience. And our aspirations are to build a granular loan book spread all over the country.”

To achieve its aims, TAB is looking to build relationships with those with mixed-use high-street assets and multiple income streams rather than single large-value assets.

Meanwhile, the firm is selectively growing its team to make the most of its new funding and expand its market reach. Upcoming appointments will strengthen its sales infrastructure, with new roles in business development, case management, and internal underwriting — supporting greater integration of AI and technology across the lending process. 
“What we're looking for is people that can use the knowledge they've gained to help train the technology to do things faster.

“We don't want to hire highly skilled underwriters to do manual data input into our platform, but we do want them to come on board to help train and shape the lending models we are building.”

With fresh funding secured, Duncan said the timing was right for the business to enter the commercial mortgage market and relaunch its core-plus product. Buoyed by easing inflation, growing market confidence, and the prospect of rising property values, he believed now was the moment to put the new capital to work and into the hands of borrowers that need and deserve it.