BTL Insider spoke to Jamie Pritchard, managing director of sales at Glenhawk, about the work going into the firm’s first BTL offering
Bridging loan lenders Glenhawk is targeting the first quarter of 2025 for its entry into the BTL market. Work is ongoing and good progress has been made, but the firm’s managing director of sales, Jamie Pritchard, doesn’t want to rush anything.
“Could we go towards October? We could, but I'd want it to be right,” says Jamie. “And even if with a soft launch, I wouldn’t do it in November. And you definitely don’t do it in December,” he adds.
Work has included a hiring spree with Glenhawk looking to “bolster all different departments” by adding to functions such as underwriting and sales — Simon Lee, the lender’s head of operations, is overseeing this and bringing in the right people. At the same time, Glenhawk has been progressing with choosing the funding partners.
“We've got some really exciting funding behind us at the moment,” says Jamie. “As everyone knows, NatWest is in there as well. We're talking to people of that ilk.”
Here, the focus for Glenhawk is on finding funding partners with the same ethical and moral values and Jamie gives the example that NatWest has a strong green initiative which reflects Glenhawk’s morals.
Supporting this is tech, and Glenhawk is currently collaborating with a tech partner to boost its own proprietary platform ahead of the BTL launch.
BTL presents a different tech challenge and Jamie is aware that clients will expect portal access. “We need a good portal, which allows you to give a good customer broker journey, but also allows me to have really good data points, which I can use for lots of reasons, including marketing,” he explains.
According to Jamie, the expansion into BTL is a natural step and an opportunity to expand upon Glenhawk’s strength – which he says are its people – and generate further repeat business through high-quality service.
“We need to offer something which complements the market, but also offers something different out there,” says Jamie of the firm's BTL aims. “You've got to impress [brokers] with service.”
Looking to the market, he’s aware there are challenges. Data from Finder.com recently revealed the total value of BTL lending was £18.26bn in 2023, down 56% from the previous year.
However, he’s confident of the market turning around and says there is plenty of business to chase, and believes that the market will go back up to over £40bn.
As for Glenhawk’s particular lending targets, while Jamie is not ready to divulge any particular numbers, he does state that the firm is aiming to complete a significant amount of business.
“The goal in a few years’ time would be to have a 1% market share of the market. That's a huge amount, you know,” he adds.
