It’s no secret that the last year has seen an influx of short term lenders enter the market. Yet to what extent the new competition has produced innovative products and a variation in rates – all healthy outcomes of a thriving market place – is questionable. To some, all bridging lenders do the same thing; they just dress it up differently.
Sitting in their soon to be redundant offices in Stanmore, (they’re moving to Elstree next month), father and son David and Duncan Kreeger, two of West One Loans’ four equal partners, make it clear it’s their straight forward, no nonsense attitude to lending that matters. They don’t ‘dress it up’. And their no frills approach seems to be working; they have gone from strength to strength, growing month on month and completing deals of up to £3 million. They’re the latest lender to get people talking.
For David, Duncan and Steven Wasserman, all CEMAP qualified brokers, it’s their relationships with the brokers that makes the difference. To them introducers are the life blood of the business; they are the customer as much as the investor and the borrower are.
“We’ve never gone back on a deal. We’ve been brokers ourselves, we don’t want to upset them. Before we decide on a loan we discuss it as a team first, the decision has to be unanimous.
“If one person doesn’t like it we don’t do it,” explains Duncan.
There’s something rather refreshing about West One Loans. They seem a little media shy and they don’t believe in business development managers. They just want to lend – plain and simple. They want to lend and they want to lend their way. They don’t have a limited number of direct funding lines, their money comes from a mix of about a hundred different sources – some individuals, some companies – and they believe their funding model allows them a greater degree of flexibility than many of their competitors.
“We don’t have a rigid approach to the deals we do. You need to be able to think outside the box – we will always look at a case, no matter how quirky.
“We have the money and we want to lend, and experience tells us that we pick the right deals,” says David.
It’s obvious the four partners; David, Duncan, Steven and Mark Abrahams work very closely together. With their administrator, Hayley Cooke and financial controller, Sarabjeet Bhoday they are a tight team of six where the relaxed and down to earth attitude could well be the secret to their success.
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