Martin Cook of Exel Finance is an AR that started with the network last year and even he won’t mind admitting that his has been a steep learning curve. He has however thrived from being able to self-manage some of his own cases and with a genuine dogged sense of never giving up this has helped him to close two deals that other brokers would have let slide.

An established property development company in Lancashire

A property development company that needed to obtain a loan as a result of sales of new build homes being delayed. The development project consisted of 3 high quality executive homes that had experienced massive delays due to COVID. They had received an offer of a CBILs loan from Oak North but the terms required 90% of the loan to be repaid on the sale of the first home, which was at that point only about one month away, which was not acceptable to the company.

Martin read that Merchant Money might be willing to consider a CBILs loan on better terms and put an application to them for a secured CBILS loan. Martin received the support of Nick Newton, the BDM and also the CEO of Merchant Money who requested a zoom call with Martin to review the application. The loan was offered and completed quickly and gave the clients the £330,000 they needed.

This was such a ground breaking loan for Merchant Money that as a result of this loan case they created a new product based on a developer exit bridge and have successfully gone to market with this.

An established construction company in Lancashire

This company was referred to Martin having approached their own bank, HSBC, for a CBILs loan. The bank’s decision was that the client could not afford to service a CBILs loan because of a loss in their latest accounts. Reverting with projections of contracts secured and a positive cash flow projection, the bank then concluded that the client didn’t need a CBILs loan!

That is when Martin got involved.

The case was Presented to 3 lenders: Iwoca, Funding Circle and Nucleus, who each in turn declined the case. Martin presented the case again to Merchant Money backed up with facts and figures as to why the company’s loss was not an accurate indication of its past trading history or future potential.

Many questions were asked and Martin responded to every question and query put to him by the underwriters thoroughly and completely which eventually persuaded the lender to take a view and finally the credit team approved the loan for £250K. The client was delighted.
Both the above were CBILS business loans that completed with Merchant Money and in the words of Nick Newton their BDM

“ …. it really Is worth highlighting Martin’s efforts on these – even my underwriter commented on the thoroughness of answers and the overall packaging and I’ve never heard him say anything positive!”

In addition, it’s worth noting that both the deals had a broker fee charged to the client on top of the lender’s procuration fee and a very healthy combined income on both these deals was achieved.