In March, Spring increased three of its institutional debt funding lines and closed on a mezzanine funding round from private investors.

Earlier this month, the finance provider reduced rates across its product range and introduced enhanced criteria, while bolstering its team to close to 40 staff.

Talking to B&C about the company’s recent boost in funding, Jim said: “It enables us to expand from a sales point of view to draw more business in. It also enables us to expand our product range and increase our risk appetite, as the confidence is built in what we do.”

With the business boasting facilities from the likes of NatWest, Aldermore, and Hampshire Trust Bank, among others, Jim is keen to roll out further products, such as unregulated and regulated development as a stand-alone product set as well as an enhanced unregulated bridging proposition early next month.

The latest string to the lender’s bow was launching into the Scottish bridging market.

With members of Spring utilising their knowledge of the Scottish market from their experience spent at Masthaven, the time seemed right to advance into the country.

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“A lot of us have a background at Masthaven, both pre-bank and post-bank, where Scotland was a very good market for us. So, we've got experience there and the relationships, and we had a number of our key brokers saying, ‘When are you going to lend in Scotland? There’s opportunity’.”

At the time of speaking with Jim, the lender had already received its first loan application in Scotland, despite only launching earlier that week.

Regardless of the company’s recent growth, Jim sees Spring keeping its own pace and its feet firmly on the ground.

“From a lending point of view, it's looking at incremental business across markets [and] looking for niche areas to establish yourself. You can either go in with crazy criteria or cheap pricing, or a more structured way looking for small incremental gains [to achieve] strategic growth.”

While the business doesn’t have plans to establish a dedicated team in Scotland, it has continued to grow the amount of people within its team; Spring recently hired Amy Robinson as BDM for the South West of England, as well as Natasha Satanas as a business development executive.

The investment in new people has also meant growing other areas outside of the credit and underwriting teams, such as bolstering compliance functions, technology systems, and back-office support.

As the company expands and it also wants to change the perception of where it stands in the market and grow into new areas to provide capital.

“The big plans for H1 was to launch in Scotland, [which] we've achieved,” stated Jim, “the next one is to become a recognised, key player in the non-FCA regulated space.

“Most people who are aware of Spring see us as a regulated proposition — that's an area we targeted and have been successful in.

“But now it's very much targeting the unregulated market, with a dedicated service proposition suite of products that we think will really hit the spot and grow that area."