Two weeks after launching a 0.65 per cent bridging rate, a new lender has announced £4 million of loan completions.
Wellesley Finance launched into the bridging market last year and introduced a 0.65 per cent vanilla bridging product, with an LTV of up to 75 per cent, a fortnight ago.
Anthony Fane, Joint CEO and Head of Lending, told B&C: “We have completed £4 million of gross loans and will drawdown on another £3 million over the next few weeks. We envisage the loan book growing to £10 million over the next two to three months.”
Wellesley & Co, the lender’s parent firm, launched a peer-to-peer lending platform in November.
It is unique as Wellesley uses its own money to fund every loan agreed with the borrowers, pending its lender clients participating in those loans. In doing so it participates and risks its own capital in every lending decision that it makes.
B&C has been informed that one of the biggest changes since the platform launch is in regards to its investor gathering.
Graham Wellesley, CEO, and Andrew Turnbull, Head of Lenders, are taking the lead on capital lenders.
Graham Wellesley, told B&C: “Graham said: “We have £5 million of committed capital and are not dependent on third parties. We therefore take proprietary risk and have skin in the game with our capital buffer.”
“The amount of capital that has come in has been quite astounding, and we have double to treble-digit growth in terms of funding.
“We have an incredibly wide spectrum of investors throughout the UK. Many are small businesses, some are doctors and lawyers, and we even have an ex-CEO of a household investment house in the City.”
Anthony said: “We believe we have the best short term bridging rate in the market and judging by the response of our core brokers we are seeing a big increase in demand.”
“The velocity of incoming investors means that we are much more confident of bigger loans. When we launched we offered £350,000 loans, now we offer £2 million loans.”
The Wellesley & Co platform is the first asset-backed model where the operator is taking a stake in every loan.
Anthony said: “We put our money where our mouth is.”
It is unique as Wellesley uses its own money to fund every loan agreed with the borrowers, pending its lender clients participating in those loans. In doing so it participates and risks its own capital in every lending decision that it makes.
It will retain a portion of every loan and the shareholders have committed to provide £5 million of their own money for this purpose. Therefore, it is the only P2P lending platform to risk its own capital.
Wellesley & Co has very strong expressions of interest from Europe, which Anthony said: “After FCA regulation comes in it will open up the floodlights to institutional investors.
“The possibility of money coming in from Europe is vast. The European market is much bigger than the UK, substantiating bigger European private investors getting involved in the UK debt market is a big opportunity.”
Wellesley & Co has been operating as a property finance company since June 2013.
It launched as Sterling Property Finance facilitating bridging, development and mezzanine finance, but in conjunction with the launch of the P2P platform it rebranded as Wellesley Finance in November 2013.
When it launched, the lender offered maximum loan sizes of £350,000. In September, the lender launched 0.95 per cent bridging products (falling from 1.15 per cent) and increased its loan size to £500,000, which again rose to £1 million.
The lender has now doubled its maximum loan size for bridging and development loan enquiries to £2 million, which includes rolled up interest and fees added to the loan.
Sources have informed B&C that the lender is on the verge of extending its terms, currently capped at 12 months, to 15-18 months.
Wellesley’s Criteria
1st and 2nd charge bridging;
Mezzanine finance;
Development funding (65% of loan book);
LTV up to 75%;
De Villiers one prominent valuer; Blacks Connect – law;
Vanilla bridging product;
First charge;
Non-main residential properties;
Available - unless credit score doesn’t fit;
A single financial backer – total loan capital of £25 million.
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