The bridging lender recently expanded into Scotland with the appointment of Alan Coats as its new lending manager.

It already has lending support in place for the new office — which will be based on St Colme Street — and will look to recruit depending on deal volumes.

Speaking to Bridging & Commercial, Jon Preston, sales director at Signature Private Finance, expects that in the next two years, its loan book will be over £180m.

He stated that it currently has 14 employees and will be at around 20 by the end of the year.

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Signature currently has just under 10 sanctioned deals going through in Edinburgh and the surrounding areas.

“One of the reasons for appointing somebody in Scotland … [is that] they know the market.

“We know the market in the Midlands and Tony [Gilbertson, CEO at Signature] knows it in Wales, but Alan knows the real estate market [in Scotland].

“So, we would have probably just said, ‘Okay, we'll only lend in Edinburgh,’ but with Alan's knowledge, we're looking at deals in Aberdeen, Perth [and] Livingstone.”

Jon stated that the new office was located within the ‘magic mile’ of the Edinburgh business district, and added that this would make it accessible for lawyers, surveyors and brokers.