The bank — which was born out of the bridging loan business conducted by ActivTrades — received its full UK banking licence in February 2023 and, in September, launched its regulated bridging product.

“I think it's an opportune time to get into regulated bridging because there's good demand for it at the moment,” said Roz.

Earlier in October, StreamBank selected Norton Broker Services to its panel to assist with the introduction of its regulated bridging offering. 

“A lot of other lenders have pulled out of that market, so there's less lenders in that pool — it is a great opportunity for us.”

When asked why some finance providers have moved away from regulated bridging, Roz pointed to funding: “The margins that you could make on it have been squeezed with the base rate rises and costs to funds.

“That's been less favourable over the past 18 months or so.

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“People have made a decision to pull out — either because of cost of funds or they just want to concentrate on other areas of the business.”

One area Roz highlighted was the growth of the BTL sector: “I think a lot of lenders were moving into the BTL market,” she said, although noted this space had also got harder.  

Roz’s role — which she describes as “everything property finance” and focuses on sales, origination, and distribution — will help StreamBank reach its end-of-year target in March 2024. 

“When I joined, we were slightly behind target — now, we’re already ahead,” she divulged.

“I've spent a lot of my time seeing what we can do and how we can do it, and a lot of that has got to do with launching the regulated bridging product,” she explained. 

When discussing StreamBank’s growth in general, Roz stated: “We have deliberately not gone out too big too quickly because we're really conscious that we must balance the volumes coming in and the service we can provide.

“One of the things we're strong on is being able to find solutions and do what we can to overcome any sort of challenge.

“While we're a small team, we're really experienced.”

Roz predicted that October would be the best month for the bank so far, and is on target to lend circa £20m. 

“This level of completions is really encouraging,” she said.

“There are not many banks that are able to say they're going to be profitable by the end of year one.

“That's our target — and we're certainly on track.”