In an exclusive interview with BTL Insider, Quantum Mortgages’ managing director Jason Neale (pictured above), has confirmed the firm’s plans to lend a further £300m of BTL loans over the next 12 months.
Earlier this year, Quantum Mortgages celebrated its two-year anniversary, as well as the record monthly levels of new applications, offers made and loan completions in February 2024.
The lender also registered record revenue and profit numbers during the same month.
Since its launch in 2022, Quantum Mortgages has reached £200m of completions to date and close to another £200m in pre-completion pipeline, accounting for around 1700 loans.
“The deals that give us most joy are the cases that have been declined because the property has a ‘zero value’,” said Jason.
“We prefer to make our own decision on what is mortgageable, based on the individual circumstances of the landlord, property type and rentability, so refuse to accept any property has zero value.
“Seeing the brokers reaction when we produce a mortgage offer on these cases where they thought it wasn’t possible is always a memorable moment.”
While the last two years of have been fairly tumultuous for the BTL market, Jason believes that the team’s extensive experience and knowledge of how to operate in a challenging environment has enabled Quantum Mortgages to succeed.
“We had seen it all before and during difficult times, we feel it’s important to stick to your core values and beliefs which for us is common sense, doing the right thing and helping our intermediary partners — as challenging as some of our problems were, brokers had a much tougher time, so we overcame each challenge together, before moving onto the next one.”
Over the past two years, Jason has witnessed the BTL market evolve into a more complex sector with more professional landlords and complicated limited company structures, and has been amazed by the creativity of these property investors to make things work.
“We’ve seen landlords buying SPVs with properties in rather than the properties themselves, beneficial interests in companies, lease creations, title splitting and rent assignments to name just a few,” he elaborated.
Having anticipated this evolution of the BTL market, Quantum Mortgages’ proposition and lending criteria was designed to meet landlords’ evolving needs.
“Product wise, the affordability issue needed to be addressed, especially for landlords trapped on expensive tracker reversion rates, so we introduced a remortgage product that would allow an ICR calculation of just 100%,” said Jason.
“Our appetite to lend remains as strong as ever because we have the experience and expertise to write complex BTL business safely, despite the higher rate environment and uncertain economic outlook.”
Looking back at the firm’s achievements to date, Jason credited Quantum’s success to its 37-member team, and to the support received from its brokers, packagers, networks and mortgage club partners.
“I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve achieved — to deliver such incredible business performance during the worst two years for the sector is one thing, but to do it while maintaining our core values of common sense, transparency, respect and helping others means so much,” he said.
And the lender has no plans to rest on its laurels; Jason revealed that the business aims to roll out its technology roadmap for both its BTL and bridging divisions, with both systems looking to incorporate a greater number of API integrations, live chat functionality, AI and process automation to enhance the broker and customer experience.
“The system work is in the final stages of development, so we hope to be ready by late April / early May with a complete online journey unlike anything else currently available,” he said.
Not only that, but the team is working hard to surpass its current lending targets and lend a further £300m of BTL loans over the next 12 months.
“The intention is to continue to service the more specialist end of BTL which, while growing, remains a relatively small sector of the market. Our ultimate aspiration is to become one of the UK’s leading multi-product non-bank mortgage lenders,” Jason concluded.
