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Bridging lender MTF has not only rebranded, but has moved its Head Quarters, completed a record month and expanded its team.
Bridging lender MTF has not only rebranded, but moved its headquarters, completed a record month and expanded its team.
B&C spoke to Director Joshua Elash to find out more about all the enhancements behind the scenes at MTF and why the outfit has rebranded with penguins …
Joshua Elash, Director of MTF, told B&C: “We feel the new brand is one which more accurately represents who we are as a lender and what we stand for. There were a number of reasons we went for the penguins as our company symbol when reviewing with our consultants. First and foremost we liked the fact that Emperor Penguins are serially monogamous. They have only one mate each year, and stay faithful to that mate. As a bridging finance lender focused on relationships, whilst offering loans with a typical term between 6 months to one year we found this to be a good fit.
“Our success is down to building relationships, and brokers and borrowers come back to us as their preferred lender partner as they know we consistently deliver.”
MTF has not only rebranded, but it has also successfully moved to a new bigger office in the West End.
Joshua added: “It’s a fresh and exhilarating start to the New Year. We’ve rebranded and moved into new offices, situated in between Mayfair and Marylebone. Our team has also been boosted with the appointment of Anneke Labuschagne, who joined us in mid-February. Anneke, who is working with the team on communications and on portfolio management, personifies everything we look for with someone in our team. She’s come from a background in accountancy and financial management; Anneke is a people-person and is very disciplined.
“Our internal team now stands at ten members, but we also have a full range of external support staff, including external finance consultants and analysts, our panel of lawyers and valuers, communications advisers, and also brand consultants. We like to bring people into our team from outside the industry as they are not mentally pre-conditioned to look at certain things in the industry in a specific light. It’s refreshing to get a new look and perspective on things, especially as we look to find new niches MTF can move into.
In a new regulatory world, MTF hasn’t taken an absolute decision about whether it will become regulated just yet. “It again depends on the market; this industry evolves so much even from quarter-to-quarter. We’ll have to make a cost-benefit analysis on the subject, but as we stand we’re a transparent non-regulated lender offering excellent service levels whilst maintaining a flexible approach to lending.”
MTF has continued to grow and has completed a record month in March 2014. Looking at the bridging lender’s Q1 figures for 2014, “they are significantly up from Q1 in 2013,” explained Joshua.
Joshua added: “We’ve never been one to sit on our laurels, we’re always looking to enhance our business and products. Our rebrand came at a time that we won the Best Service Award at the Business Moneyfacts, which was an unanticipated attention upside at a time when we hadn’t otherwise made any noise about our rebrand.”
Joshua did disclose that MTF is currently looking at new ways it can enhance or launch new products for this year, but it is dependent on current market conditions. “We don’t want to be a jack of all trades and a master of none. It’s not in our best interest to diversify with many financial products just for diversifications sake. There’s no point in us joining the secured loans market, for example, when we know the bridging market, have made a name for ourselves and established a strong position within the sector, unless we believed we had something unique to offer to that market.”
Interestingly, expanding on the topic of launching into new areas of finance, Joshua believes that the bridging market has evolved to such an extent that it could be split into two different categories.
He explained: “The market has developed so much that it could logically be split into two categories: the bridging finance lender market and the short term lender market.
“The fundamental nature of bridging finance has evolved so much over the past few years. Bridging finance is however fundamentally commercial, it’s fast and flexible and was, and is, typically used by investors, property traders and at auctions where time is of the essence. Bridging lenders look at an asset and are able to instantly determine the bottom-line risk assessment being the security and to release funds quickly for loans ranging from 1 months and up to typically 12 months.”
“In the short term market, one increasingly sees loan term of up to 3 years, and the processes and underwriting are a lot more akin to those associated with a buy-to-let lender rather than a bridging lender. Given the longer term nature of the facility this is wholly appropriate. There are some excellent lenders operating in this space and one we have looked at with interest.”
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