Recognise Financial Services

Recognise Financial Services plans to offer bridging finance




City of London Group has revealed that its subsidiary Recognise Financial Services — which is currently applying for a banking licence — will look to offer bridging finance upon receiving its licence.

The group hopes to have its restricted licence in place by the end of this year.

In an exclusive interview with Bridging & Commercial, Michael Goldstein, CEO at City of London Group, explained that Recognise would look to provide asset-backed loans to SMEs.

This includes unregulated bridging, commercial loans, buy-to-let and asset finance, with a maximum loan size of £2.5m.

Michael explained that its bridging business — which currently comes under Property Funding Solutions — will become part of Recognise once the latter receives its licence.

Recognise may also look at launching a development finance product further down the line.

It will initially have three hubs located in London, Manchester and Birmingham.

Michael said: “We will look for relationship managers in each of those hubs, and we're already talking to people about the possibilities of staffing them.”

Its underwriting process will initially be based in London, although it plans to launch an administrative hub, which could potentially be located in the Midlands.

Michael stated that commercial lending would probably be the largest part of its business, and it would use brokers to originate this.

Its strategy is to have a £1bn loan book by 2024, four years on from the planned mobilisation of the bank.

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