In an interview with Matthew Webster, chief financial officer at Cloudscraper (pictured above) – who has 28 years of experience in the commercial real estate capital markets – he announced that in addition to new enhancements for lenders, it would also be looking to help promote standardisation within the commercial real estate industry. 

The former global head of real estate finance at HSBC said: “Today, all lenders are under pressure to do more with less which is making their job harder. 

“Cloudscraper provides tools that allow the lenders to work more efficiently in multiple ways.”

Tools include pipeline management, access to borrowers using automated processes, the ability to pre-screen transactions through its deal algorithm to improve deal review efficiency, full integration with all transaction advisors and improved data accuracy.

“As part of the continued evolution of the platform, we have a number of enhancements to be released shortly that will add even more tools and benefits to lenders utilising the platform,” Matthew added.

While larger, global lenders are using the platform, Cloudscraper could also be beneficial to smaller funders.

“We believe a particular strength of the platform is the ability to provide a cost-effective solution to small- and medium-sized lenders that currently manage their business through Excel and do not have the scale to implement a costlier solution.

“This delivers a broad set of tools and the effective technology development capacity these small lenders cannot access more readily on an internalised basis.”

In the development of the platform, Cloudscraper has also been looking at data standards set by numerous global entities to adopt them when possible.

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“One of the biggest difficulties the technology side of the industry has is its ability to have an effective open-source framework, largely due to the lack of any broader industry standards within countries, much less globally. 

“Therefore … Cloudscraper will do what is possible to facilitate an industry move to more standard global data sets.”

Can brokers benefit?

Matthew claimed that many proptech ventures had been founded on the premise of disintermediating elements of the industry, particularly brokers.

“We actually believe the brokers and agents play a vital role within the marketplace and, rather than trying to preclude them from [the] process, we would prefer to enlist them as effective partners.   

“This would see Cloudscraper providing all brokers a single, independent delivery and execution platform … that eliminates the need for each broker to develop an in-house proprietary system.

Matthew explained that this allowed brokers to provide bidders – equity or debt – a full structured data set, documents via the integrated data rooms, and instant auditable communications.

“Further, because Cloudscraper unites all market participants, all the brokers benefit from the enhancements implemented from feedback across the marketplace, not those of just a single user base.”

How fast can commercial property transactions complete?

Matthew explained that since joining Clopudscraper, he has had considerable influence on how to expand the value proposition for certain participants within the market and developed a roadmap of future enhancements based on the frustrations he had experienced – directly or indirectly – over the last 28 years. 

“I like to say that the platform already delivers a clear value proposition today for many segments of a transaction and will deliver even more shortly.”

Matthew added that the platform had already seen transactions move more quickly, and more was yet to come.

“We have examples of transaction participants getting access to the data and data room documentation in minutes, rather than days. 

“However, the due diligence phase still takes considerable time. 

“Our drive to provide structured data for all elements of the transaction will ultimately reduce that due diligence process with the eventual use of blockchain to tokenise the information for longer-term trustworthiness. 

“This is why we believe the listing and closing of a trade in two weeks or less is in the very near future.”