Despite the bridging lender being a smaller brand among a lot of competition, Funding 365 crossed the stage three times during the B&C Awards 2024 to collect a trio of accolades: Bridging Lender of the Year; Service Excellence of the Year; and Underwriter of the Year, picked up by winner Krisha Karunananthan.

“I think we're doing something right,” Mike told B&C when reflecting on the achievements, “people like our staff — we train them well.”

Despite being a pleasant surprise on the day, Mike said that winning Best Bridging Lender was a natural next step.

“It was a lovely surprise, but not shocking if you've got the best underwriter and the best service,” he commented.

The specialist lender’s team has been curated from recruiting solely graduates since 2016, rather than relying on hiring talent from within the industry.

“I think the way we operate and who we are is quite different to other lenders,” stated Laura, “it allows us to train people up in exactly the way we work and hire people who will be good at that.”

Mike added: “Our most senior people in the company at this point were graduates that we hired years ago.”

While the number of staff the business has may not be large with a team of 15, Laura and Mike feel this only adds to the quality of the company.

“The way we operate and the way the directors and underwriters multitask, we don't need lots of people to do those jobs,” commented Laura.

Instead of hiring BDMs, Funding 365 relies on a straight-to-underwriter system, meaning the first point of contact comes from the firm’s underwriters, who are mostly mandated, granting underwriters the ability to make decisions without having to go up to the directors.

Mike explained that, with a BDM offering terms, they may not be credit backed and, therefore, could be undeliverable: “Let's imagine that deal goes ahead; all the information gets pulled together by an administrative assistant or junior underwriter. [There are] valuations and lots of legal work. The borrower’s on the hook for a lot of fees at this point. That's then given to an underwriter [after] which might be two or three weeks, and the borrower could have paid thousands of pounds in valuation and legal fees by this point. But it's only three weeks later that an underwriter actually looks at it.”

Mike highlighted that a deal could then fall to pieces: “We don't have that. We have an underwriter [who] picks it up [on] day one.”

“[The underwriters] have all the contact with the brokers and borrowers, so it's very lean the way we operate,” added Laura.

When discussing the company’s growth plans, both Laura and Mike believe this needs to be natural in order to preserve the culture and uniqueness of the business, which they feel enabled them to win in the first place.

“The amount of people at the lender doesn't indicate how big they are in terms of loan book,” highlighted laura, who is of the opinion that writing large volumes of business does not require a huge team, with the company doubling its loan book size since last year.

Instead, the lender focuses on the experience the team carries, which also comprises four directors who previously worked in investment banking, offering them a plethora of connections to raise money.

“Our strategy at this point is [having] the cheapest possible funding with the best possible service,” said Mike.

“We should be organically growing dramatically, just given where we are in the market at this point in time.

“If you need something done quickly and well, you should come to us. That's historically where we've tried to position ourselves.”

Last year, Funding 365 entered the ground-up development finance sector and, this year, launched in Northern Ireland. Earlier this month, the business also entered the BTL market.

“We're just getting started in terms of rapid growth,” added Mike.