"The jewel in the crown will be the Your Expert Group brand itself, which will cover specialist areas such as bridging loans, development and commercial finance."
FR: Can you tell us a bit about your background in business?
Well it’s not particularly conventional. After school, I managed to secure a role at the global law firm, DLA Piper. I started out in their finance department and, looking back, spent seven great years there, learning a lot about business and the finance of business.
From there I moved on to Begbies Traynor, the insolvency firm, where I spent a year and half. While at Begbies, I saw a job ad for someone to head up the finance side of the Glasgow-based insolvency firm, Carrington Dean. It attracted me because it was a chance to make my mark in a less corporate environment (corporate, and especially political work environments, really aren’t my cup of tea). Anyway, myself and Peter Dean, the owner of Carrington Dean, immediately hit it off and I got the job.
Not long after I started there, I started formal training to be a chartered accountant at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland. It was a hectic and slightly surreal four years. After all, the course was all about getting me into a job I already effectively had. Also, while everyone else on the course was a full-time and rosy-cheeked student, I had three young kids already and a full-time job. I’d basically be working for three hours before the course started in the morning, at lunchtimes and at the end of the day when everyone else hit the pub. It was an exhausting time of my life but a very productive one and I’m glad I stuck it out and got my chartered accountant status.
Three or four years ago I then became a shareholder in Carrington Dean and, last September, Peter and I sold it. The timing was right and the valuation was right. We both then started looking for our next venture and honed in on a company Peter had owned since 2006 — Your Mortgage Expert. Critically, it was directly authorised with a strong regulatory infrastructure in place, which we felt could act as a solid platform from which to launch a multi-channel specialist finance business that would target a hugely untapped market north of the border. We decided to call it Your Expert Group.
FR: What’s Your Expert Group setting out to achieve?
When we sold Carrington Dean, Peter Dean and I took time out to scan the market and see what opportunities there were. For us, there was a clear opportunity within specialist finance north of the border and no obvious, standout player in the sector.
The brokers operating in the market were primarily lifestyle companies and, while many are doing a good job, we felt we could make a mark with a brand that was more nationwide and, through Your Mortgage Expert, already out of the blocks. Hence the idea of the Your Expert Group of companies. We’re currently in the process of setting up Your Loan Expert, covering the ‘seconds’ market, and Your Wills Expert (wills and life cover) alongside Your Mortgage Expert.
But arguably the jewel in the crown will be the Your Expert Group brand itself, which will cover specialist areas such as bridging loans, development and commercial finance. Specialist finance is a huge growth area in Scotland and, reflecting this, we are slowly seeing more and more established lenders set up in the hunt for margin. We feel that what we have, which many of our competitors don’t, is boots on the ground, a sizeable war chest and the ability to scale quickly.
But what we didn’t have was specific industry expertise within specialist finance, so rather than try to learn it all ourselves we hired a big hitter and recognised name in the sector, Nathan Ellis-Calcott. He joined us a month or so ago and his role is to build our presence and implement the goals we have as a business. Essentially, our main goal is to make the Your Expert Group the go-to specialist finance company in Scotland, for individuals, businesses and property developers alike.
FR: How do you plan to differentiate yourself in a market that’s already fairly saturated?
While the market may be saturated in England, in Scotland that’s certainly not the case. The specialist lending, finance and loans market here is still immature and largely untapped. Relative to what competition there is, we plan to differentiate ourselves by doing things on a scale smaller lifestyle firms cannot compete with. Over time we may extend our proposition into yet more channels, including car finance, but for now one step at a time. I’d say another differentiator we have, through our time at Carrington Dean, is a detailed understanding of where specialist lending products can be tailored to people who have had, or still have, credit problems.
FR: Which areas of the UK will be your focus?
Primarily we’ll be focusing on the Scottish market, as we plan to launch in a geography and market that we know well. But further down the line, who’s to say we won’t be looking further afield? But our primary aim for the time being is to form a beachhead within the Scottish specialist lending sector – and take it from there.
FR: For you, what are the biggest growth areas within specialist finance?
Where do I start? On the personal finance side, I think second charges are set to be a major growth sector in the years ahead. They are no longer perceived to be the loans of last resort they once were. With rates now much more competitive, they’re a genuinely viable option for borrowers seeking to consolidate debt or free up cash if trapped on a longer term fixed rate. I also think bridging and development finance are going to be a significant growth sector. The two are intertwined and as property investment capital flows away from London and the South East in search of margin, Edinburgh and Glasgow, like Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol, are perfectly positioned to benefit.
FR: Where do you see the Your Expert Group in three years’ time?
What we won’t be doing is trying to achieve too much too soon. Yes, we plan to grow quickly but also at a rate where our standards won’t be compromised. Quality rather than quantity in the people we hire and service we provide has always been our ethos and we want to build a brand that people respect. We essentially want to become a one-stop-shop for Scottish consumers, businesses and property developers, and to that end have plans for a car finance division, too, further down the line. Scotland really is a market of opportunity.
FR: If you could see one headline about financial services in 2018, what would it be?
“North of the Border is the new South within UK financial services”.
