Turner, who originated more than £100m of bridging and term loans in 2018, is the second BDM to join the lender from Shawbrook after Harleigh French joined last year.
He will report to director of lending Nick Hilton and will be responsible for expanding and strengthening broker relationships in London and the South East.
Glenhawk plans to launch several new products later this year and Turner will work closely with the senior leadership team on these.
Turner was a regional development manager at Shawbrook Bank since 2012, prior to which he was commercial director at All Types of Mortgages (now renamed as Impact Specialist Finance), running its commercial and short-term business.
His near 20 years of real estate lending experience includes roles at Commercial 1, RBS and Barclays.
Glenhawk said it completed £10.1m of loans in July and has an active pipeline of more than £38m, as it looks to build on the £66.4 million lent since January 2018.
In November CEO Guy Harrington told Specialist Lending Solutions that the lender was looking to grow its bridging lending to around £100m having already surpassed its £35m target for 2018.
Supporting growth ambitions
Commenting on the appointment, Harrington said: “Peter is joining us at a hugely exciting time, as we continue to put in place the infrastructure to support our growth ambitions, including growing the loan book to £100 million and expanding into new parts of the market.
“Specifically, his technical expertise operating in the bridging market and deep broker relationships built up at Shawbrook will be a huge asset to us as we look to grow our footprint in our key markets in and around London and across the UK.”
Watson (pictured) will be based in London and report directly to Nick Hilton, head of lending.
She will be responsible for post completion administration as well as providing support and efficiency of process for all borrowers, from loan enquiry through to redemption.
Her previous roles include redemptions officer at Amicus Finance, as well as collections and litigations agent at The North View Group.
Guy Harrington, CEO of Glenhawk, said Watson had joined at an exciting time, as the lender continues to explore new ways to expand its business offering.
He added: “Following the launch of our free valuation offering initiative, the business continues to perform strongly.
“The significant redemption figure demonstrates the growing maturity of the business while being testament to the quality of both the loans the team is originating and the counterparties we are transacting with.
“At the same time, the amount of enquiries we are originating is growing month-on-month, highlighting the continued appeal of investing in UK real estate.”
Since launching in January 2018, Glenhawk has lent more than £50m, across 87 loans with a total gross asset value of £103m, and has originated over £750m of enquiries.
The mutual reported that prices rose by 0.4 per cent in April, taking annual price growth to 0.9 per cent. It was the fifth straight month where annual growth has come to less than 1 per cent.
As a result, Nationwide suggests the average house price now stands at £214,920.
Robert Gardner, chief economist at Nationwide, noted that while indicators of market activity, such as the number of property transactions and mortgage approvals, have been “broadly stable” in recent months, it appears that sentiment has softened.
He added: “While the number of properties coming onto the market has also slowed, this doesn’t appear to have been enough to prevent a modest shift in the balance of supply and demand in favour of buyers in recent months.”
The new normal
Guy Harrington, chief executive of specialist lender Glenhawk, said that it was positive that first-time buyers were “wading back in” and picking up some good value stock.
He continued: “We need to end the perception, perpetuated by these reports, that the market is ‘weak’ and get used to stagnant house prices, not the rocket ship growth we have had in previous decades which was simply just not sustainable.”
Gareth Lewis, commercial director of MT Finance, suggested that it was hard to see the “suppressed growth” changing in the foreseeable future.
“However, the fact that there is any growth in values at all is encouraging, given what is going on in the wider political arena, and this level is more sustainable than the spikes we have seen previously, which have such an impact on affordability and people’s ability to buy,” he continued.
First-time buyers’ power
Andrew Montlake, director of Coreco, noted that first-time buyers were driving a significant chunk of the activity in the market, particularly if they were fortunate enough to get help from family members.
He added: “A combination of lower house prices, Help to Buy, fewer amateur landlords and more mortgage products at 90 per cent and 95 per cent loan to value (LTV) has created the perfect environment for people putting that first foot on the ladder.
“There’s also the small fact that a lot of first-time buyers are now looking at the property market and see that it’s often cheaper to buy than rent.”
Wareham (pictured) will be based in London, reporting to Glenhawk director of lending Nick Hilton.
The lender said it has already agreed a number of multi-million pound loans including a residential acquisition in Central London and a refinancing in the West Midlands to start 2019.
Last year it completed more than £35m of loans and secured a £75m funding line from Shawbrook Bank and Insight Investment in 2018.
Wareham will be responsible for supporting the underwriting team and expediting the enquiry to completion process.
In the past, she worked as client relationship manager at SPF Private Clients and as sales support at Coreco Group.
She has extensive experience dealing with a range of stakeholders as well as structuring and packaging complex development and refurbishment deals.
Guy Harrington, CEO of Glenhawk, said: “Amy is another strong addition to the team and will be integral in assisting in the delivery of our customer-centric strategy.”
West One Loans boosts its sales team
West One Loans has made a series of strategic appointments to its sales team from three major financial institutions.
Kevin Glover joined from NatWest where he worked as a relationship manager within real estate finance.
He will be responsible for extending West One’s presence in the North of England, providing support to brokers and property finance professionals specialising in bridging and development finance.
West One has also strengthened its second charge mortgage sales team with the appointment of Sharon Clarke and Pauline Rylands as relationship managers.
Sharon Clarke joined West One from the Family Building Society where she worked as a roving underwriter.
Clarke will work with specialist second charge mortgage advice firms based in the South and South West of England alongside – and will provide underwriting and training support to key partners.
Pauline Rylands will be managing key second charge mortgage broker relationships across the North of England and Scotland.
She joined West One following a career spanning over 30 years, including with Yorkshire Building Society where she worked as an area manager within the branch network.
Furthermore, Danny Scoltock has moved from the broker support team to become a field-based business development manager, supporting brokers and intermediaries in the East of England.
Sales director Marie Grundy said: “With the continuing growth of the bridging, second charge mortgage and development finance markets – it’s important that we have the right team in place to be able to support our broker partners.
“In Kevin, Sharon, Pauline and Danny, I know we’re bringing in relationship managers that have the experience and in-depth knowledge of the market that will add value to the team and the wider business.”
How many advisers and broker firms do you cover in your role?
Currently our whole database.
How do you successfully organise and deal with business on a daily basis?
I am quite an organised, spreadsheet sort of person and also, a massive fan of notes. As someone once told me….‘If you didn’t write it down, it didn’t happen.’
What issues come up time and time again?
That usually falls on ‘KYC – Know Your Client’. It’s important to know your client inside and out. And also to be transparent with the lender from the start, as there is nothing worse than losing a deal for something that could have been resolved or discussed at the beginning.
What do you wish brokers understood about your job?
I think it’s important for brokers to understand that we all want the same result…a completion.
What do you think is the most important attribute of a good BDM?
A positive attitude and the ability to be a problem solver.
When you’re unavailable to be contacted by telephone, what’s the second-best way for brokers to get in touch?
Usually I get LinkedIn messages or emails, but I will always call back.
If you were head of the FCA for the day, what would you change about regulation in the mortgage industry?
Speed. We are currently in the process of submitting our FCA regulation and cannot wait to get the ball rolling.
What was your motivation for choosing business development as a career?
I was quite lucky to stumble across this industry and since then I have never looked back. I enjoy the vast variety of deals that come in, no two days are the same.
How do you establish and maintain a good relationship with brokers?
It’s about respect, common ground and being approachable. I enjoy listening to brokers talk about their backgrounds and stories, but more importantly what deals they have. And if it’s not one for us, I am more than happy to point them in the right direction.
And how do you establish and maintain good relationships internally?
Easy…wait until you meet the people at Glenhawk.
What’s the strangest question you’ve ever been asked?
‘What would you say your colleagues dislike about you’… To be honest I am not sure how anyone could respond to that.
And finally, what did you want to be growing up?
I wanted to be a singer. Unfortunately, I wasn’t blessed with such a talent, despite being a secret Rod Stewart fan.
Alongside branching into the new product areas it is aiming to grow its bridging lending to around £100m having already surpassed its £35m target for 2018.
It warned that some of the lending being conducted within the sector is “scary” and “toxic” with the problem appearing to get worse.
The lender is also planning a base to cover the south west of England and south Wales, while it hopes to do further lending in the north of England and potentially Scotland.
Glenhawk CEO Guy Harrington told Specialist Lending Solutions the lender was very close to making the move having already hired key compliance staff.
“We expect to be FCA regulated by Q1 2019 where we will then be able to offer a full suite of additional products,” he said.
“Not just regulated bridging but term products, buy to let, homeowner, end of life products – we’re quite keen to get into those and there’s a few other things in pipeline we’re considering.
“It’s quite a hard sector to innovate in but our key focus is to speed up processes on our side and put our spin on it so we are competing against the big guys,” he added.
High street and airspace
Harrington admits that it might seem a bad time to go into buy to let, but suggests the current turmoil creates opportunities for new entrants.
The high street and commercial spaces are another key target market and area of interest for Glenhawk.
“We see opportunities in the high street in re-purposing retail units, whether it’s for residential or change of use in commercial or to renovate,” he continued.
“We’re looking at how we can package a product at the high street that appeals to retailers and how it can help them. We’re very open to developing new ideas in here.”
And the potential for upwards permitted development rights as proposed in last week’s Budget also excites Harrington.
“We get a lot of airspace enquiries but won’t touch them yet because of planning, leasehold and freeholder risk issues, but if the government does make it permitted development we’ll happily back those deals because it lowers our risks,” he said.
Cautious, defensive lending
The plans all sound very grand for a lender which has barely been active for a year, but Harrington insists this is a conservative, realistic push to grow the business in a sustainable way.
With funding secured for the future expansion and loan redemptions coming back in from previous lending, he believes this shows the lender is building a healthy track record.
“We had £60m in originations last month with conversion rates around 10%, and we’ll comfortably hit £6m, maybe a little more,” he said.
“We lend quite defensively, we’re quite cautious in what we lend on bearing in mind what the economy is going into next year.
“So we’ve positioned ourselves with relatively low loan to values across the book and strong assets,” he added.
Its a retail product
Like many in the industry Harrington has real concerns with the way some lenders are operating.
One of those issues is high fees to do almost any part of the process.
“We’re not charging admin fees, commitment fees, exit fees, early repayment fees and all these things which stop people wanting to take out bridging loans,” he said.
“People looking to coming in as lenders will ask how we can run the business without all these fees upfront and to exit?
“Those days are gone, this feels like a retail product now. I’ve noticed two or three more recently who were going to launch who’ve decided they can’t do it because of the market competitors,” he added.
Scary, toxic lending
And Harrington also highlights some of the “scary” and “toxic” high risk lending practices going on in the market, singling out the peer-to-peer (P2P) market for significant criticism.
“We regularly see deals that we say no to. When you get lenders recklessly lending against a value to please the borrower not the market or surveyor’s Red Book value, you get issues,” he said.
“A lot of lenders have been pushing it too far, for example P2P. It’s a great place for lenders to park toxic assets on people who don’t know where their money’s gone which isn’t fair.
“We’ve had deals come to us which their borrowers have defaulted on, we’ve been asked to bail them out and every time we’ve said no because as a rule of thumb we don’t bridge a bridge,” he added.
And it seems the situation in this part of the market may be getting worse.
“We’ve had a number of P2P loans that have gone wrong come to us and in increasing numbers – it’s quite scary from our point of view, especially the parameters they are lending on,” he said.
“It’s off in-house valuations, all assumptions and it does scare me a bit but it’s also a relief that I didn’t get into it a few years ago when we looked at it.”
He added: “Yes you can charge 1.5% per month but you are going to get the worst possible deals, worst borrowers, worst properties and there’s always something that will be a big risk.
“It’s not a market we play in but it is what the P2P lenders play in.”
Capital market funding
One thing fuelling Glenhawk and many other specialist lenders’ growth is the availability of capital from institutional funders – and its seems unlikely this will slow down anytime soon.
Due to their own capital constraints, banks are instead putting lending out through third party lenders, and Harrington expects this to grow further.
“Once a week we get an approach from a challenger bank or a pension fund or any other funding institution wanting to back us because they just can’t do it themselves,” he said.
“I can see some opportunity from the digital banks, such as Mondo, Revolut and a couple of others.
They are sat on quite hefty chunks of savers’ money and with a lack of investment banking and ring fencing they can’t really do much, so I can see them thinking they need to deploy that,” he added.
The lender said the pair of moves were intended to support “accelerated loan book growth” following its initial £75m funding line from Shawbrook Bank and a global asset manager.
Harleigh French (pictured above) has more than seven years of sales experience and joins as business development associate, overseeing the management of broker relationships, client liaison and loan origination.
She was previously business development executive at Shawbrook Bank with responsibility for new broker and client enquiries while maintaining the existing deal book, across both the residential and commercial mortgage sectors.
New analyst
Nicholas Hare (pictured left) has joined Glenhawk as an analyst and will be responsible for financial modelling, risk and investment analysis and mergers and acquisitions analysis and research.
Hare was previously a commercial analyst at Cabot Financial, working closely with the corporate development team on mergers and acquisitions and new market strategy.
He also helped to manage Cabot’s Spanish real estate portfolio and produced regular analysis on the UK and European debt landscape.
Glenhawk chief executive officer Guy Harrington said: “Harleigh and Nicholas are joining us at a hugely exciting time following the new funding line, and their respective skill sets will be integral in helping us identify both the borrowers and parts of the market that are ripe for our unique lending proposition.
“Harleigh brings with her a proven track record of growing high-quality loan books, while Nicholas’s background in financial analysis and reporting will complement our existing financial team.
Harrington added that the lender had “a significant pipeline of deals lined up for the rest of 2018”.
This is aimed at facilitating a major acceleration in Glenhawk’s loan book growth, through the provision of fast and flexible short-term lending solutions for a diverse range of residential and commercial property professionals.
Under the terms of the facility, the funds will be channeled into short-term residential and commercial loans, include second charge, typically between £300,000 and £3m in size. There will also be the option to fund later stage development.
Following its January 2018 launch, Glenhawk has lent over £20m across 35 loans to date and amassed a near-term pipeline of £35m. Backed by Rightmove founder Harry Hill, it hopes to capitalise on the growing demand for non-bank lending and leverage the real estate and financial services backgrounds of the 15 strong team in offering a more agile and streamlined lending process.
Guy Harrington, chief executive officer of Glenhawk (pictured), said that this is a major milestone for the business, and with the support of two highly regarded and successful institutions we now have a platform to actively promote our bespoke products to a broader array of borrowers, for whom certainty of funding remains the key factor when choosing a lender.
“Whilst we have seen a significant professionalisation of the short-term lending sector in recent years, a result of both the ongoing retrenchment of more traditional sources of financing and the favorable returns available from property investment versus other asset classes, the market is still ripe for disruption.
“At Glenhawk we believe that bringing a forward-thinking approach and institutional style practices to the sector mean we are well positioned to quickly establish ourselves as a more attractive proposition to the current breed of lenders.”
Sarah Watts, at Shawbrook Bank, said: “We have a lot of experience in the bridging sector, and what makes Glenhawk an exciting proposition for us is its fresh outlook on the market coupled with a strong management team who keep customers at the heart of every decision.”
The lender has £30m of its own capital to lend and is set to begin discussions with banks and other funders to extend this and potentially branch into longer term buy-to-let finance.
It is offering funding for bridging, auction, refurbishment, development and commercial finance projects across the country and open to offers from all interested brokers.
Glenhawk CEO and founder Guy Harrington (pictured) told Specialist Lending Solutions that although the lender has set a guideline of between £300,000 and £5m for loan values, it will consider smaller deals if they are not administratively complex or demanding.
It has also removed initial upfront fees and early repayment charges from its products, asking for a minimum three-month loan term instead. Rates will begin at 0.5%.
Smaller funding amounts
The lender went live with its offering last week and is currently working on seven potential deals.
“We had so many enquiries come through it’s exciting but slightly terrifying, and having been a property developer it’s interesting to be on the other side,” Harrington said.
“We are looking at all sorts of lending and seeing what comes through the door – it’s been mostly development finance and auction purchases so far.”
Brokers have been urging lenders to make funding more accessible for smaller and lower value projects and this has been recognised by Glenhawk.
“Our guideline minimum value is £300,000 but it can be can be a smaller loan, perhaps £100,000, or niche asset,” Harrington continued.
“Providing the administration is not too complex or restrictive we will consider it.”
Growth plans
Although the lender has barely been operating for a week, it has notable plans to grow.
“We’ve got £30m of our own capital to deploy over the next eight weeks or so, but we’re going to begin discussions with banks or funding lines to increase our product range. From that we would like to introduce longer term buy-to-let medium term products for home owners,” he said.
Joining Harrington in the business as managing director is Paul McFadyen and director of lending Nick Hilton.
McFadyen was former UK managing director of Regis Group, while Hilton has lent over £300m across both residential and commercial bridging since 2008.
The firm is also backed by non-executive director Harry Hill who was a founder of Rightmove and former CEO of Countrywide.
