While it is traditional for lending to slow down over the summer period, it is always interesting to hear that some companies were busier than ever and launched some of their most innovative developments.
So apart from the Summer Budget announcement and the ever-impending anticipation for interest rates to rise, what growth did we see from the industry over the past few months?
Specialist lender Blemain Group, which has been preparing for a major rebrand and developing its broker portal over the past few months, explained that business generally slowed down during August.
“Business always takes a slight dip in the August holiday period, as many clients will want to focus on family during the school holidays, although the busy July period ensures that there are lots of completions taking place,” commented Gary Bailey, Sales Director at Blemain Group.
Gary stated that valuers, lenders and solicitors all taking time out resulted in a slower period.
However, for the rest of the year Blemain Group will be focusing on its brand change, which will bring all its services under one umbrella, as well as reviewing its processes to ensure it is MCD-ready and has educated its brokers in time for April next year.
“Obviously it’s their responsibility to ensure the required changes are made, but as an industry we really need to come together on this,” Gary added.
Development lender Goldentree also noticed it had been quieter over the summer, however spent the slower period ramping up its “wacky” advertising.
Steve Marsh, Managing Director of Goldentree, let on that they were set to launch a new product shortly.
Heavyweight lender Dragonfly Property Finance explained that while the summer was always quieter than autumn and spring, they had still had a “busy few months” and were set to enter the home straight for 2015.
After making changes to their criteria over the summer, Mark Posniak, Head of Sales and Marketing at Dragonfly Property Finance, revealed they had plenty more in the pipeline now that it was “back to school”.
"We have lots of exciting news and developments that we’ll be announcing in the weeks and months ahead,” Mark added.
Boutique lender Ortus Secured Finance also noticed that phone calls and meetings slowed down during August, however they still remained busy.
“In particular, our pub finance and Northern Ireland products have maintained their steady increase despite the summer season,” Jon Salisbury, Managing Director of Ortus Secured Finance commented, joking that they would need to write 20 deals to cover the extortionate bill Richard Beenstock had racked up on his holidays.
Jon also told B&C they were building some strategic alliances which they were hoping to reveal later this year.
On the other hand, Market Financial Solutions revealed that enquiries had increased over the summer period due to the passive lending of banks and businesses requiring funding quickly.
“There has not been a drop,” stated Tiba Raja of Market Financial Solutions, adding that it was “in fact quite the opposite”.
“Summer is a good time to grow and develop business lending.”
Over the summer MFS doubled the size of its funding in order to provide better bridging rates, as well as increased its team, and we are likely to see more underwriters and bridging lending experts joining the firm over the rest of the year.
Niche lender Mint Bridging revealed that over the summer it saw a record rise in growth with August being its best month, as well as finalising its recruits for its upcoming London office and accelerating its core team.
“We actually expected August to be quiet since everyone’s on holiday so this has been a good surprise for us,” commented Andrew Lazare, Managing Director of Mint Bridging.
Mint, which just launched its newly revamped website, revealed to B&C that it is soon to announce details of its new team members of specialised experts and is working on fine-tuning new products in H2 of this year.
“It’s an exciting time for us as we see a gap in the market, especially rebridging (where we’ve created our niche) hence bringing in these new savvy employees at the right time for scaling,” Andrew added.
“I’m proud of what we’ve achieved together.”
“Seasonal peaks and troughs appear to be a thing of the past,” explained Bob Sturges of Omni Capital, who noted that the world of short term lending never seemed to take a break.
For the rest of the year Bob said the lender was looking at securing an even bigger slice of the development finance sector, whilst still intending to remain as a niche financier.
“I'm not going to give away too much, but many of the development opportunities out there are not for us, either for risk reasons or because the returns are too thin.
“But there are areas where we can provide funding on terms that satisfy both a particular client need and our own expectations,” Bob added.
Reema Manna, Senior Underwriter and Solicitor at Titlesolv, also highlighted that it had seen a rise in transactions insured post-election period “as borrowers take advantage of favourable interest rates in anticipation of future upwards rate trends.”
Bridging lender Roma Finance also saw little drop off over the summer, stating that bridging now seems to be a 365/24/7 business.
“We’re still on track to triple our lending in 2015 compared to last year,” Scott Marshall, Lending Director of Roma Finance said.
While the lender has introduced new internal systems over the summer, it is also looking at developing more introducer-facing systems over the next six months.
“We will also be launching new lending criteria aimed at the bridging and development finance market and providing introducers with more opportunities to place business with us, particularly on property renovations, auction purchases and commercial builds,” Scott added.
Amicus revealed it saw business increase over the summer, with Keith Aldridge, Managing Director of Amicus, stating they had completed a “whisker short of £100m for June July and August,” with July producing record completions at £39m.
Amicus revealed over the summer it had increased its team with four notable captures and is set to announce further additions later this month, as well as launch a new product in H2.
“…We confidently expect that our funding lines will be over £400m in 2016 giving us every reason to believe that 2016 will be even better for the Amicus Group,” Keith added.
Preston-based Mayfair Bridging declared that the summer months had been “busy” with completion levels doubled when compared with the June to August period last year.
“The days may be getting shorter but the business shows no signs of cooling down,” stated Yasin Patel, Divisional Director of Mayfair Bridging.
“There is no doubt that our proposition has been strengthened since we became a part of the influential Amicus Group and our performance has reflected how wise that decision was.
“Growth is what it is all about in the summer months and the way things are at Mayfair Bridging we have no reason not to believe that there is a long Indian summer ahead for the second half of 2015.”
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