Bridging and commercial finance D2C comparison site launches undercutting advisers

The Propp website has gone live with 40 lenders and claims to provide bespoke quotes for borrowers within 24 hours which on average save over £9,400 per year, based on the negotiated interest rate.

It is led by a trio of former John Charcol directors – Peter Williams, Ben Larkin and Paul Elliott.

Williams and Larkin left the firm two years ago to form their own wealth management business, while Elliot joined the Buy to Let Business (now Dynamo) in 2017.

Williams is chief executive officer of Propp, Elliott is managing director, while Larkin has taken on the role of chief technical officer.

The firm says by digitising much of the process, including rate negotiations, digital signatures, and electronic identification it can cut the average bridging loan completion time below the current 52 days.

It also “aims to remove industry-wide bias towards preferred lenders and certain types of agreements” by accessing a wider pool of lenders.

Consider more applications

MT Finance is one of the first lenders on board and director Tomer Aboody praised the development.

“The website is very user-friendly and gives borrowers a solid spread of the lenders currently operating within the specialist property finance market,” he said.

“The process is extremely transparent, delivering a rationale to every search result and even provides users with a clear indication of savings on each loan.

“As a lender, it’s encouraging to see innovation in the property finance market that will enable us to consider more applications.”

‘Fed up of brokers’

Property developer Mike Stenhouse said he used the service “after getting fed up with the lack of transparency and slow speed we’d seen from some brokers” and could not speak highly enough of it.

“They beat rates we’d seen from brokers by several tenths of a per cent, saving us thousands of pounds across the project duration, and we felt like we had much better clarity on who the right lender was for us.”

CEO Peter Williams said: “Propp has been purpose-built to shake-up the archaic specialist property finance space and bring it in line with the demands of today’s borrowers, who are accustomed to the convenience and transparency of automated technologies and instant, high-quality customer service.

“For too long the industry has rested on its laurels when it comes to automation and real transparency for its customers.

“The seasoned team we’ve built is committed to leading the industry by example.”