"Gone are the days of a narrative sent to a dozen or so lenders via BCC and trying to manage their responses."
FR: Tell us a little about your role at Provide Finance
Sure! My role at Provide is that of business development manager. I’m responsible for demonstrating and onboarding new brokers to our platform. I also keep up with our lenders and maintain their lending criteria. It’s a busy job but speaking with brokers and lenders everyday means there is always something exciting on the go. My role also afforded me extra insight into the pain points of our users and how they want to use the site which means I also have heaps of conversations with our tech and product team to ensure we’re remaining on top of the feedback and updates.
FR: How can Provide help brokers to get better outcomes for their clients?
Sourcing for unregulated property and business finance can be a challenge. Currently, there is a shortage of specialist packagers in this field of lending, which contributes to higher costs and perceived inefficiencies. This is where Provide steps in, seeing this not as an insurmountable problem, but as an exciting challenge. Our goal is to bridge this gap and deliver more efficient, cost-effective solutions, creating a significant positive impact on the lending industry. Our platform gives the brokers the ability to source for their deals in one place while still going out to an extensive panel. Gone are the days of a narrative sent to a dozen or so lenders via BCC and trying to manage their responses. Provide gives brokers a single place for them to liaise on deal with both the lender and us. All these things enable the broker to attain the best product for their clients’ circumstances, in a timely and compliant way.
FR: What makes the platform unique?
The lenders on our platform review our enquiries on a case-by-case basis and can engage with the broker in a messaging window on each case. We don’t ‘rate bait’ on the platform by saying things like “you can get rates from X” (in the full knowledge that the small print makes that impossible, by in large). The rates from our lenders become available once their representative has comprehensively reviewed the inquiry, asked necessary questions, and gained full understanding of the transaction.
FR: What areas of lending are proving most popular at the moment?
The use of bridging finance has become extremely popular, whether that be with an element of refurb for EPC upgrades and the likes, or just standard bridging. We’re also seeing a fair few buy-to-let landlords who are looking at cross charges, top slicing, and other smart ways of retaining their portfolio when it doesn’t quite fit on rental in this high interest rate market. Development is always quite a high proportion of our transactions – our panel is well-stocked for development and change of use on all kinds of security.
Within business finance we arrange many unsecured business loans, and invoice finance although we’re also seeing an increase in asset finance and business overdraft facilities.
FR: What is your outlook for the next 12 months in specialist finance?
I will refrain from any wild macro-level market speculation; there are plenty of far more qualified opinions out there and I prefer to keep my feet in my shoes rather than my mouth!
That being said, I’m optimistic about the next year for specialist finance. I find it really interesting how investors in this country are feeling increasingly empowered to take on a change of use project, pick up a semi-commercial or commercial property or JV a development which generates new residential property. To me, an increase in those types of projects which generate further housing is where I feel lender product development should be concentrated. There’s a huge benefit to all parties when more housing is created, where either there was none, or the space was being wasted. I also think we should be looking at how to address the gap for existing landlords in rental cover, with more top slicing and product development in those areas too. I do feel people will continue to bridge this year as we see more properties up for sale from highly motivated sellers.
