August 2018
By Guy Harrington, CEO at Glenhawk
For a new company launching in any market, there are some basic questions that must be answered. Specifically, what is unique about your offering and who do you need to target?
When we conceived Glenhawk, we were incredibly confident in our product: short-term property finance with minimal fees to the client, provided by an experienced team that could understand the developer’s perspective.
With regards to who we wanted to target, this was more interesting. Our team’s development experience naturally attracted us to developers, however, our commercial acumen was telling us we needed to appeal to the backbone of the industry: the broker community.
Initially we struggled to gain traction with them. Understandably, brokers want a smooth ride with lenders as much as we do with brokers, so change for them isn’t attractive unless they know the product and offering is strong.
Bridging really isn’t complicated - there is no need for patronising brokers or adding unnecessary ‘fluff’. We have had a very straight-to-the-point offering, which we have found has been easier for the market to get a handle of.
The speed we have been able to supply loans and our ability to pay brokers their fee without fail on day of completion have been key for a really strong start too.
Monetary incentives have also, of course, been important, like paying the full arrangement fee to the broker. However, our competitors can all price at 0.4% and promise the world, so for us it has been more about the delivery of the service and efficiency in the process. When you are a time-sensitive developer, a poor valuer, legal team or lender is a huge hindrance and negates the lower rate incentive.
We have also found that having experience in complex assets has really appealed to the market. Our MD ran a portfolio of 22,000 freeholds, and our CEO has been a developer for over 12 years. There isn’t much we don’t understand in development or complex assets, which has resonated with brokers acting on behalf of their clients. Of course, we are learning all the time.
At just over six months old now, there is no doubt that our broker relationships have been absolutely fundamental to expanding our loan book. As we grow and market ourselves more, and have more capital to lend, there is no doubt we will be targeting brokers, but also developers. They are the lifeblood of the housing market, and we need to build more homes from interesting spaces. Whether it’s roof space, PD conversions or a barn, it all contributes.
We like to think we understand both developers and brokers, and our number one priority is to make their lives easier and fee-light.