Speaking to this publication, Tanya Elmaz (pictured), Together’s managing director of intermediary sales, said there had been growth in bridging – both in regulated and unregulated bridging – in the past year, continuing a trend that it had seen over the past few years.
Elmaz said this was partially due to a tightening-up of high street lending as well as slower transaction speeds, which meant bridging was often used to ensure deliverability of transactions.
However, a “surprise growth area” was BTL business, which shows the “entrepreneurial nature of UK property investors”.
“If you pick the right geographical location, the right target market, if you purchase intelligently, there are still opportunities in the BTL market.”
She noted that there had been a shift from “straightforward” BTL to house of multiple occupation (HMO) models, and there was also investment from foreign investors.
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“If you pick the right geographical location, the right target market, if you purchase intelligently, there are still opportunities in the BTL market,” Elmaz said.
Another key area of opportunity is the commercial term market, as investors are changing their models from standard BTL and are looking at semi-commercial and commercial properties “in that order”.
“If you were a typical BTL investor and you want to change your model, looking at a nice shop on a nice high street with some flats above is a very natural next move,” Elmaz said.
She noted that Together still saw these as “growth areas” in the year ahead.
“We will be focusing on going a little bit deeper.”
Elmaz said Together was a “one-stop shop” for specialist lending, but bridging and commercial term lending made up around 70% of what it did, with the remaining 30% coming from its other business areas.
“With all the products that we offer, we will be focusing on going a little bit deeper, so for example, with our bridging proposition, we’ll be looking at how we can support better with refurb bridges, with our commercial term, we’ll be looking at how we can support incorporations, SIPP and SSAS.
“These are things that we already do. They’re almost unpublished behind-the-scenes type of work, so what we’ll be doing over the coming 12-18 months is trying to bring those types of product… offerings out of the referral end of what we do and into the more standard published area of what we do,” she said.
Focus will be on educating brokers on ‘full availability of flexibility’
Elmaz said one of the challenges for brokers is “being aware of everything that is available, because the [specialist lending] market is continuing to grow”.
“There are more lenders in the space, and it’s not easy for brokers to be aware of all the options that are available,” she said.
She added that on the other side of the coin, there was a challenge for lenders in “educating brokers and keeping them aware”, which was crucial, as “there is so much for them [brokers] to know”.
“It is a focus of ours to make sure that we continue to educate our brokers and keep them aware, and I don’t just mean aware of changes, because we all do that. That’s pretty straightforward,” she said.
“Our focus is, has been, and will continue to be, to make sure that we can educate all brokers on that full availability of flexibility.”
“We have been increasing our awareness with brokers on how to access the full flexibility of Together, because that’s what we’re known for. We’re known for being entrepreneurial, flexible and bespoke in the way we look at things, and that means that our policy is not always written down.
“There’s a policy that’s written down, but we go so far beyond that, and we have a number of brokers that have worked with us for a while, and understand… the depth of our flexibility, but actually our focus is, has been, and will continue to be, to make sure that we can educate all brokers on that full availability of flexibility,” she added.
Elmaz pointed to its education programmes, webinars and a new focus called Opportunity Knocks, which allows brokers to talk to business development managers (BDMs) and underwriters directly about referrals.
More brokers looking at specialist lending
Elmaz said the specialist lending “environment has really changed”, noting that five years ago, high street brokers, clubs and networks “didn’t dabble in the specialist market and weren’t overly interested”.
However, now there is a “more versatile spread” of brokers who are looking at the specialist lending sector.
“As the specialist lending environment has changed and grown, and the gap between specialists and non-specialists is getting smaller, those brokers are very keen to understand more about specialist lending, and that’s what we see,” she said.
She said it had grown its broker panel, and that this number was “continuing to grow”, adding that it has grown to 6,000 brokers, nearly doubling since around two years ago.
Elmaz said brokers were interested in first charge residential products, flexible BTL offering, bridging and commercial offerings.
“The gap between specialists and non-specialists is getting smaller, and brokers are very keen to understand more about specialist lending.”
Regarding the broker onboarding academy, which was unveiled earlier this year, Elmaz said it would be looking to put at least 20-30 brokers through it every single month.
“It’s not mandatory, it’s bite-size online learning programmes. We will be recording them as well so people can play them back if it’s not convenient. We know that time is precious for brokers, but we have different phases within that academy.
“We have the modules for… brand-new brokers and then we have more detailed training for brokers in product sets, and then we dig even deeper. If you want to understand… how to look at affordability, how to look at valuations, those types of things,” she added.
Together doing ‘complete overhaul’ of tech systems
Elmaz said Together had taken the decision over a year ago to “completely overhaul our systems”, and it was looking to update its back book, front book and broker portal systems.
“We’re really excited about that because we know that in the tech space, you have to run pretty fast to keep up, and one of the important focuses for us is that whilst we want to automate all the ordinary stuff that people do, it’s very important that we keep that bespoke nature, that referral nature, that ability to speak to people. We call it our special sauce. We don’t want to be losing that.
“We need to be conscious that when we are moving into a new tech space and new portals and new systems, that we want to be able to keep the underwriters and sales individuals free to speak to people. That’s how those entrepreneurial, bespoke, flexible decisions are made,” she said.
The first phase will launch next year, but Elmaz said the following phases would start to “get really exciting with what we can do and how agile we can be with our product development” and the final phase would look to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI).
