Financial Planner Life Podcast
Welcome to The Financial Planner Life Podcast. We cover an intimate and honest account of what it’s really like to work in the financial planning profession.
Our guests share their stories of success, failures and learnings, as well as what to expect from a career in the financial planning profession! We host guests at various stages in their careers, as well as multiple roles to ensure that our audience has a variety each week.
Financial planners, business owners, paraplanners and back-office staff all have their own story to share, and The Financial Planner Life podcast is a platform for them to talk about their personal and professional journey. The podcast covers a multitude of topics, from mindset and motivation, health and wellbeing all the way to diversity and inclusion.
We approach each episode with the idea that it is going to educate and spark a conversation within the industry with topics that may not be openly discussed. So, if you are thinking of becoming a financial adviser, or you’re curious about learning more about this brilliant sector, we urge you to give the podcast a listen.
The Host: Sam Oakes is the host of The Financial Planner Life Podcast. since 2008 Sam has been supporting leading national and global financial planning firms in finding the best talent, he was the director of Recruit UK, a 7 figure turnover financial planning recruitment company that he successfully exited in 2024, Sam now works as the Head of Creative for Hoxton wealth, building out podcasts, YouTube and social content for this fast growing fee based international financial planning firm.
Sam has always had a passion for financial services, starting out as a trainer for leading product provider in the UK, he has been in the industry for over 20 years.
He sees himself as a partner to the industry and wants to contribute useful resources such as this podcast to educate those further who are seeking advice and help about how to push their careers forward in this amazing profession.
Be sure to check out
Financial Planner Life Academy - start your career today!
https://financialplannerlife.com/academy/
Financial Planner Life Podcast
How we built a £2.5 Billion lending business, and why we are doing it again with TAB!
Chris Ball interviews Duncan Kreeger and Stephen Wasserman, the dynamic duo behind West One Loans and now TAB, in this fascinating episode of Financial Planner Life.
Duncan and Stephen share their journey from a single desk in Duncan’s dad’s office to scaling £2.5 billion in lending. They also dive into how they’re reinventing property finance with TAB, leveraging technology and AI to build smarter, faster, and more ethical lending processes.
You’ll learn about:
- The origins of West One Loans
- Scaling to billions in lending during the 2008 financial crisis
- The challenges and rewards of mixing friendship with business
- Why belief and confidence are the keys to success
- How TAB is transforming property finance
If you’re curious about entrepreneurship, innovation, or financial services, this episode is packed with value.
Begin your financial planning career journey today
Whether you are looking to become a paraplanner, administrator, mortgage and protection adviser or financial planner, the Financial Planner Life Academy is for you.
With limited entry-level job roles, giving yourself the best financial planning career education, will not only kick start your financial planning journey with relevant qualifications and skills, but it’ll also help you achieve success much faster.&nbs
Be sure to follow financial planner life on YouTube for extra content about a career within Financial Planning HIT THAT SUBSCRIBE BUTTON!
If you're looking to start your career in Financial Planning, check out the Financial Planner Life Academy here
Reach out to Sam@financialplannerlife.com in regards to sponsorship, partnerships, videography or career development.
Right. So today is a bit of a special episode for me because I'm interviewing two of my very close friends, which is good, obviously. Before we've interviewed Terry Smith, and we recently did one with David Neesha and now two other financial service legends who aren't financial planners. So this will be a really interesting chat. So, first off, if you guys wouldn't mind introducing yourself to our viewers and just telling us a brief bit about yourself and what Tab do, Hi Duncan Krieger, CEO of Tab.
Speaker 3:I'm 40 years old, spent the last 20 plus years in short-term property finance and more recently started evolving into a mainstream mortgage lender. So really excited about TAB, what we've done so far, and I'm sure we'll share some more insights with you during this episode.
Speaker 4:We will for sure.
Speaker 4:I'm Stephen Wasserman, also 40 years old. I am a lifelong friend of Duncan. We've worked together forever. It feels like forever. We set up a company called West One Loans back in 2007. Very successful journey for us Sold the business a couple of times. I am the CEO of a property company called National Housing Group and also the COO of TAB, so I work very closely with Duncan on TAB's business and also Duncan helps out with National Housing Group as well, which is buying property for local authorities and for social housing purposes. Yeah, awesome.
Speaker 1:So I told you guys it would be different in terms of the normal financial planners or life companies or fund management businesses that we deal with. But these guys planners or life companies or fund management businesses that we deal with but these guys, you know, and we'll get into it as we go through have had an amazing track record of success within financial services, built up some incredible businesses along the way, so it's going to be a really good episode today, which I'm really excited about. But what is even more unique no pressure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no pressure you guys. What is even more unique about Duncan and Stephen is how long you guys have known each other, which you know, and actually my wife weirdly reminds me all the time that they are her friends and not mine, Cause they were introduced. I was introduced to Duncan and Stephen by my, by my wife, so maybe you can tell the guys how you, how you first met each other.
Speaker 3:I haven't gone back this far for a while.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you want me to tell the story I first met duncan on my first day of school, jfs.
Speaker 4:I started in year eight, uh, so everyone knew each other, apart from, obviously, me, and I was put next to duncan, my first class, which was maths, yeah, and at the time Duncan was not well behaved. He was a little bit unruly At the time At the time and he decided to no, you didn't have a no book day. He used to have no book days as well. We refused to get his books out of his bag, but he destroyed his maths paper and was a bit of the class clown, I would say. And then, from that moment on, we were friends.
Speaker 2:You bonded over that Exactly. I was like who is this guy?
Speaker 4:But yeah, that's when we first met, and with Sarah I met Sarah, Chris's wife, on my first day of school as well. Turned up at Edgeworth Station, saw Sarah there, travelled into school with Sarah on my first day. She was very kind, Said come travel with us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was it. So my first day of school, wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's, that was year eight, yeah, so.
Speaker 4:I'd have been 12.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so 28 years ago?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's insane, we've literally hung out pretty much every day since then and talk to each other multiple times a day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and our kids are very close in age and very, very close friends as well. I mean pictures of our kids, our eldest sons, when they were both, you know, a few months or weeks old, um, so it's definitely sort of continued into the next generation. I don't think we've had many cross words at all since that time and obviously there have been loads of good times and we'll talk about that as well but lots of stressful times as well when you're running multiple different businesses and going through some of the sort of general ups and downs that we've been through over the years. But I guess the theme is we tend to kind of start in a different place and if we meet in the middle then we would agree it's something that we should be doing. But we've got enough respect for each other that if one says definitely not, then we probably wouldn't do it.
Speaker 4:I think that's a key thing is the respect and compromise, because we respect each other. If I say to Duncan or he says to me, we really shouldn't do this, we'll hear the other one out and we won't do it with a with a kind of pre-bias that we may have had beforehand. I'll listen to duncan with a kind of fresh pair of ears, yeah, and think is this right or is this wrong? What's his point?
Speaker 1:and I think that's been really the key, because then we can talk it through, we can debate it in a healthy way, due to the respect of having known each other for 28 years and having gone through a lot, and definitely since I've known you, I can attest to that that you, you know, I've never known you guys to have a crossword um, which is, you know, which is quite unique, especially when you're operating in business together. I mean, you probably see each other more than your respective partners and you probably spend two, uh, more, uh, more time, more time with each other. It's interesting as well because, you know, people normally say don't mix friends and family with business, but yet you guys have managed to do that super successfully and I always used to look on enviously into how you guys would run as a partnership and it is a, you know, it is a true partnership, which is, you know, which is really cool to see it's surprisingly so unique, but what actually happens in reality is, most of the time, people fall out.
Speaker 3:Most business partnerships, whether they come from sort of friends this long back or this far back or otherwise, it normally comes to a point where people want to go in different directions, and we've actually experienced that with our previous firm when there were four partners and we all sort of wanted to go in slightly different directions, but steven and I were always on the same page and we wanted to move forward together, which is what we've continued to do so you guys obviously were at school together and then you went on to go to university and then you well
Speaker 1:yeah, no book day might have suggested that your you know your days were limited. However, like you've gone to university, you haven't. And did you leave at 16?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I left as early as possible. I mean, I was probably still enrolled past then but didn't sort of see all of that through, never really had any intentions to. In fact, I had my old school teacher in this very room a few months ago and we figured out that I'm older now than he was when he taught me. So a lot of time has passed, but he remembered that I just wanted to be free to go out and explore the world for myself.
Speaker 3:I've never skipped a day of work since then so I worked pretty much every day and I enjoy the challenge of coming in and getting stuck in, but I didn't have a desire to sort of follow further education. I did get a lot of the upside because I used to go up to university and stay at Stephen's house. So, yeah, I mean we have remained close all through those times, even though we've sort of taken different directions. There's definitely been a theme of our past 28 years, as we've identified which is which is super cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then obviously, steven, you went off to university, but I think that just goes to show people that you don't necessarily have to go to university and you don't necessarily have to not go to university to be successful in financial services. And you know, really, you know, as long as you've got that want and desire to succeed, no matter where you start, you can.
Speaker 3:You know, you guys have always stuck together and you've, you know, you've done amazingly well, maybe we've had the benefit of, as a partnership, doing both yeah you know, maybe it was enough that one of us went off traveling to uni to sort of explore those things, because we brought all of that knowledge back to one sort of central hub.
Speaker 1:Um, so we haven't necessarily missed out on anything because we've remained sort of so close, which comes to that point which you said before, which was the different points of view. So, like you know, you will bring different perspectives to different problems and be able to solve them, which is interesting. So you left school and you did what?
Speaker 3:Yeah, my first jobs were in property, or real estate as I always call it now, but my first real, proper job that I can remember, I did work in a fish and chip shop for one night and I was like this is not for me, um you probably came there to visit me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've got free chips and um, my first job was at the state agents in Clerkenwell, um, it was called urban spaces and my job was to go around these really fancy loft New York loft style buildings, wharf buildings on the river, initially in lettings and then very quickly after in sales, and I always from that moment really had a kind of real passion for property and real estate and I think the thing that sort of led me to finance was I was always interested in great that you can buy this for a million pounds, spend a million pounds on it and it will be worth three but, where?
Speaker 3:how do you do that? Where'd you get the money from?
Speaker 3:and that was always the bit that sort of intrigued me, um, and that's led us to doing property finance for for many, many years. But also, um, I think it's really quite important. But a lot of the people, the people that I worked for in that business, I still do work with today. So it's been a very, very long time, but I've tried to build a good network and carry myself in the right way and sort of deliver on my promises. And although I left that business early on because they tried to change my commission structure and I wasn't happy and I felt that it wasn't what we agreed and it wasn't fair, we remained friends and we still do business together now.
Speaker 1:So it's always been property since then, and it's a lesson don't burn your bridges and keep those relationships, because you're still talking to these people now. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And still feel young even now. Obviously sort of blurted out that I'm 40 at the beginning, but in some respects I feel younger than ever. It's just you should be able to make better decisions in your 40s, having sort of seen what happens. But those sort of fundamentals, I think, are imperative. You've got to, you know, not be out there to do one more deal and have a good year when you think about how many more years there are to come.
Speaker 1:And then you also worked for your dad, didn't you?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So then my dad became a mortgage advisor. So he wasn't a mortgage advisor when I grew up, he was actually a butcher. When I grew up he went off on his own path and after doing some property related jobs, I was interested in the finance side and he said come and help me. He was a mortgage broker.
Speaker 3:This is before mortgages were regulated, so before the FSA at the time even started regulating mortgages at all, and I started filling in forms and going out and meeting clients. In fact, the first qualification that I ever got was to become a qualified mortgage broker and I passed all my tests. At the time mortgages were becoming regulated and I think I found it easy because I was interested in it and I could see that this was a path to me being able to make money rather than at school. It was, like you know, not really too desperate to have these certificates hanging on my wall. I didn't want to get into kind of being a doctor or a dentist or a lawyer, so that felt like the first sort of qualification I needed to help me in my career.
Speaker 1:It's your purpose, your. Why isn't it? Yeah for sure, absolutely. And then Duncan is off doing property, working in a fish and chip shop for a day, and you know, getting his qualifications. And then, obviously, you took a different path, stephen. So you went to university. You obviously went through school, sixth form, then went to university, and then what?
Speaker 4:So yeah, so I did A-levels university and then after university, as Duncan said, it was a lot of fun and it's a great experience to go to university. After uni, I went travelling. So I went travelling for a year. I actually worked for Gatsby Smith Klein for six months, then went travelling for a year and then when I got back, I think I was about 22,. When I got back, duncan and I were talking about doing something together. Obviously, we'd kept in contact the whole time while I was traveling and I got offered a job at Aon. So I was debating going to work for Aon on a grad scheme and Duncan said look, I've got an idea around bridging finance. His dad, as he said, was a mortgage broker. Duncan was working with his dad at the time and what he said to me is I'm looking at Halifax that are lending money at 5% to Lancashire mortgages who are lending money at 15% 20%, but it's the same property, same client, same risk.
Speaker 4:As far as he was concerned, and he said, look, there must be something there. Yeah, and he said, look, there must be something there. And then fast forwarding a couple of months for a month, he offered me six thousand pounds of his own money.
Speaker 4:Yeah, to give it six months because, look, I've come back, I've got some debts. I borrowed a thousand pounds from my stepdad like I need to earn some money. I can't just set up a business and, you know, not earn money for a long time. So he sent me six thousand pounds don't think I'm ever paid you back and yeah, and went from there and then got a desk in the office and set up West One Loans, although it was already set up, because Duncan bought a number plate West One Loans and then decided to set the business up. Save the number plate Always comes back to a car.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly along the way, which we'll get on to as well as we go through duncan's passion for cars. But okay, that's, that's super interesting. That's almost like a sliding doors moment, like where, like, had you decided to go and work for aeon?
Speaker 1:yeah and not like none of this might have happened. Maybe it would, maybe it might have, but it's it's really. Maybe it might have, but it's it's really interesting. Those kind of like and you know, you, I, I see them a lot with different people that we talk to which is it's that pivotal moment. And you look, I mean I don't know if you guys look back at it or not and think it would have happened anyway, but like that could have been very different you're mad, yeah, yeah, I say everyone my family, yeah, yeah, I mean for me, I think it's quite interesting because there's two types of entrepreneurs.
Speaker 3:Some are, they don't want to sort of tell you I've got this idea but I'm not ready to share it and I'm working on it in the background and one day I might be ready, and my view's always been I need as many good people around me as I can share as much as possible. See, who wants to come on board for the fight and Stephen was really the first person that that happened with. I was like no, I think there's something here. I need your help. I think you can add something and appreciate that I might have to sort of put my hand in my pocket to give it a go. But it was the difference between you know me having to go away and convince someone else who maybe I didn't feel as strongly, would be able to do it. And, yeah, pretty much from that day we were up and running and you actually had some reservations in the beginning.
Speaker 4:I mean you uh, maybe more reservations yeah, there were ethical reservations to begin with. As in what? As in lending money at high interest rates to people on properties.
Speaker 1:What it felt like loan sharking or something it felt like that part of the market.
Speaker 4:It felt like it was the messier end of the mortgage market.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which it probably is, but that brings opportunity Exactly.
Speaker 4:And I just wanted to make sure we did things in the right way.
Speaker 3:I think that's what it was that we were. We had the right process in place and we were fair and we were ethical in our approach. And that came up again when you started talking about starting NHG that there was an area of the market we felt that we could have a positive influence on again, which I feel like we really did in bridging finance.
Speaker 3:But I remember right at the beginning, just sort of starting to recall this stuff for the first time in a long time that it was obviously a good idea, and it's proven to be a good idea, and lending money is actually the oldest business in history or maybe one, but it started under the apparently under Rialto Bridge in Venice is where the first sort of loans took place, but it is one of the oldest businesses in history and I think we felt it was a good business. But remember having to convince you we're not ripping people off.
Speaker 3:This is not loan sharky, it's a, you know genuinely well established need where people take money for a short term, um, whilst they're figuring something out, and then they either sell it or go on to a sort of longer term solution we did have a challenge when we started, which is it was Duncan and I.
Speaker 4:We were 22 years old, it's just the two of us and we wanted to be a money lender, mortgage lender, but we had no money.
Speaker 1:That's a pretty big challenge.
Speaker 4:It was a challenge to begin with, like okay, fine, we want to do this. Now what? How do we get some money to lend? So this was back in 2007. And we approached Mark Goldberg, who is one of the board directors at Together. They were Lancashire Mortgages at the time, and do you remember that lunch we had with him at Wings in Manchester?
Speaker 1:Classy. Yeah, it was actually quite a nice restaurant. It was nicer than it sounds.
Speaker 3:I've just got like Wings stuff in my head. It's nicer than it sounds. It's nicer than anywhere else. I've just got like wing stop in my head. It's nicer than it sounds. It's nicer than anywhere else. Had taken us for lunch probably, and we met Mark.
Speaker 4:What a legend. Yeah, mark Mark's great.
Speaker 4:I mean he's 100 miles an hour, but he's completely on it. And still to this day. Still to this day. And he said yeah, I'll give you some branded lending so we'll lend you lending. So we're lending money, as in Lancashire mortgages, but it will be branded West One loans. So we could start to go out to brokers pitching. But then we weren't making a ton on the interest, we're making the fees, and that's how we got going. That's how we started to get brokers. And then we went from there with the high net worth investor model. But it was before peer to peer was a thing. We thought, okay, this was as the credit crunch was taking place in 2008 and as liquidity was more difficult to obtain through traditional mortgage lenders. But you had lots of people with still lots of money, but they didn't want to buy property. And then you've got borrowers who don't have access to those high net worth individuals or mortgage lenders anymore. So we thought, surely there's a way to match them together.
Speaker 3:Timing was actually amazing. I mean, you know, definitely have learned that timing is everything. You know. Lots of people have good ideas and you've got to get over the line, but stars need to kind of align and we had this sort of vision to start lending money when lots of other lenders just couldn't, for one reason or another, because of the credit crunch, I mean, turn the news on banks were going out of business and bankers were walking out of their office with the contents of their desks.
Speaker 1:So actually was a very good time for us to put a stake in the ground and say West One Loans, we're lending money, because it meant we had an opportunity to talk to people that otherwise probably wouldn't have had the market sort of been so buoyant it must have taken a lot of balls when that I remember 2008 I remember being at kpmg and the senior manager, uh, fainting in the middle of the office as he was getting ready to tell everyone was going to be sacked, like, or a lot of they were not everyone, but they were letting a lot of people go like it was.
Speaker 1:It was bad times and you guys just thought, well, you know, like let's go and start a lending business. But again, I think that really shows that you guys would see opportunity where a lot of other people just saw negativity, and you were able to you know, you're able to. You know, take advantage of that. And if you like, kind of 2020 vision, if you look back, you go, of course, like it makes perfect sense. You had super low interest rates. Liquidity was really an issue, like it's like the perfect storm, but at the time when you're in the storm, it's very difficult to see through it. Um, which is, you know, obviously, you guys then went on to build an amazing business.
Speaker 3:So there was four of you to start with in the business you and duncan yeah, and then two came on yeah, so we started on a desk basically the size of this desk in my dad's office, which have you still got it no. I've still got my chair actually randomly.
Speaker 3:That's cool chair um, which is another story, um, I should bring it in actually. Um, we started with desk, but it was in the mortgage broking office where I'd qualified as a mortgage broker, um, and I'd sort of had my own little office, much, much, much smaller than this room. But then when Stephen joined, he came in and that was like our West One Loans office on the door and so my dad continued to be a mortgage broker and we were going out trying to talk to different investors anyone that would listen. Basically, I mean, I remember meeting the fourth partner, mark, who we'll talk about. I remember meeting the fourth partner, mark, who we'll talk about.
Speaker 3:But basically, once my dad started to see that actually they started to do some loans and stuff, he agreed to come on board and to help focus some of his attention on it, bearing in mind the types of mortgages he was doing at the time were getting more and more and more difficult, so it wasn't sort of a boom time for that mortgage broking business. So we met this guy, mark, who was one of the first investors, who said, yeah, I like it, I'll put some of my own money in and if I do, I can bring lots more investors if it works, but I want 25% of the company. We looked at each other and we were like it's 25% of nothing at the moment pretty much.
Speaker 3:So if he gets 25, stephen gets gets 25, let's bring my dad in, he'll get 25, and the four of us can work on it together. So we didn't have a salary, um, but the the agreement was that we would try and make some money and we would sort of divide it up four equal ways, which is pretty much how we went on right up until the end when we sold the business. So mark came on as the first investor. He came and joined us in that little room, so the three of us were sitting in there Takes me back.
Speaker 1:He was in investment banking in London, wasn't he? He was a bond trader yeah, he was a bond trader, so he went from bond trading in London to backing two mid-20-somethings.
Speaker 4:And working in the business as well as an investor and working with you.
Speaker 1:I mean the story you must have told, all conveyed, and the confidence that you must have had.
Speaker 3:I remember we spoke to his accountant, who was my accountant as well at the time, and at the end of the meeting I was in, I said to Russell, I just want to talk to you about this idea of West One Loans and we want to get some investors to come in. And he said I've got the perfect person for you, my friend Mark. He's a bit crazy but he's been banging on at me about lending his money on property and I think you guys should meet. And we met him over a coffee and over that coffee he's like I'm in, I want 25% of the company. And we're like, okay, sounds good. Um, yeah, so I think you know it sounds like we sort of met the right guy and spun a good story.
Speaker 3:But every discussion that we had about the business, every discussion we had amongst ourselves, was kind of refining what we were actually going to do, how it was going to work, who was going to do what and playing to our strengths. We knew some people in the mortgage market. We met some investors along the way. We knew a bit about property. So it's just kind of piecing these things together. One at a time we got regulated as well.
Speaker 4:You enter CKFT because obviously, if you're going to pool money together, and lend it. It was a grey area if we needed regulation or not. There was before peer to peer, there was regulation, obviously, within pooling capital together to buy assets or whatever else but it wasn't really clear because nobody was doing peer-to-peer lending like this.
Speaker 4:Obviously now it's quite a big thing, but it wasn't back then and we went to ckft, which is a firm of lawyers it's no longer there and then we went to council and they said they're not sure, but they think maybe we do, and the advice we were given was a UCAS, an unregulated collective investment scheme. Went to the FCA, got regulated, took us about three, four months, yeah, and then went from there. Wow.
Speaker 3:And that was kind of our first big thing to get regulated. Yeah, and then you've got a badge of honor from the fca that says this is a regulated firm. You've done your policies and your procedures, so you're just kind of learning along the way. What do we need to make this happen? There's a checklist of things you need, right? How do we get them done, one at a time, um, until that point, which I guess, yeah, was a turning point for the business wow, that's all within the first few months of doing it six months, yeah, and it's that, and I mean like obviously that's happened.
Speaker 4:The six grand was probably running out by now I was thinking about the first dividend check. What was that? The first dividend check we took David I hope he doesn't mind me saying this was doing the accounts, and so we all, you know, we all thought you know, we're going to distribute some money. We've got 50 grand, 100 grand, whatever it was in the account. I think we took like seven grand each or something like that. Yeah, seven and a half grand each and you know we got pictures with our first checkup.
Speaker 1:Oh nice.
Speaker 4:And then when we actually went through the numbers again so we paid ourselves the money, banked the cheque, then we're like, oh no, we've actually used interest that we're holding. It's actually not because we didn't have two segregated accounts at the time. Yeah, and we actually paid ourselves a dividend that wasn't supposed to be paid, so we had to then send the money back.
Speaker 1:Dividend policy. Yeah, this is the first dividend with your cheques. You actually really had to send it back.
Speaker 3:Pretty much, yeah, I mean that definitely taught us a lot about you know, just thinking from there Governance. Yeah, exactly, we didn't want to hire anyone because we weren't sort of we were all doing different parts, but the first person we actually hired was a financial controller Sarabjit.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Sarabjit. He stayed with us as well through up until we sold the business, but it was, you know, just identifying what you're good at and where you should be spending your time, and none of us were qualified accountants. We're all kind of entrepreneurial, trying to do a good job. But it's easy, you know, when things go well, you have different challenges.
Speaker 3:You think you set up a business starts going well, you start celebrating, but in it starts going well, you start celebrating, but in reality it just identifies right, then you need to grow up as a business and governance, as you said.
Speaker 1:And when you solve one problem, another problem comes, so obviously things have gone pretty swimmingly so far. What was the first big challenge that you had to overcome, apart from paying back your first dividend check?
Speaker 4:I would say the first big challenge we had in business that we've had some bad loans. Yeah, you know, I mean today we've lent probably three, four billion pounds, three and a half billion pounds. So you're going to have some bad loans, some stories. Yeah, we've got some stories and there were some bad loans not early on, but, you know, within the first couple of years. Just problems, just people not paying back on time, defaults, that sort of thing. Yeah, so that was probably the first business challenge and I think also the four of us working together was a challenge.
Speaker 4:Uh, you've got very different personalities. You've got mark, who is a real red character, very fiery, very strong. Uh, duncan as well has probably got elements of red in him, uh. And david's probably more of a peacemaker, and I don't know, maybe I'm more balanced across the board and David's your dad, obviously.
Speaker 4:So I think the first change was working together when people have different opinions. We talked about how Duncan and I have worked together so well. We didn't have that necessarily in the same way, so you saw the other side of the coin, saw the other side of the coin, yeah, and yeah it was difficult when you don't get on with your partners. We got on well with Mark, who obviously David's his dad, but it can be tough at points and you know Mark's fiery and very opinionated and it can be a challenge.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean it's been. You know it is interesting. Stephen and I we've always sort of been happy for one another to hold the pen. But when, mark, when you have disagreements or the business has got a thousand most businesses have got decisions you know better than anyone decisions to make on like a second, second basis fine, if everyone's pulling in the right direction. But when it starts to be like, well, he's saying we should go this way and you're saying we should go that way, then it comes down to whose decision actually is it.
Speaker 3:So we hadn't, we weren't experienced enough at the time to know you should have shareholders agreements and who's going to have seats on the board and who's got final say, who's the CEO, who's the chairman, who's the director. So those things started to come into play as we had more disagreements. I mean, mark and I had a funny relationships. We'd go off to Arsenal together, be best friends, and then come into the offer and office and literally scream at each other. And that got sort of worse and worse up until the point where bear in mind the business at this point is going really, really well, you know. So we, when we sold the business in 2014, we had about 100 million pound loan book that was from 2007,.
Speaker 1:nothing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 2007,. Nothing to 2014,.
Speaker 1:100 million under management of private At that point, and that doesn't include all the loans that have redeemed along the way.
Speaker 3:Loans were on average, 12 months. So to be at that point it meant we would have had to write 100 million in the 12 months prior to that. So roughly you know, 10 million pounds a month of new loans.
Speaker 3:Average loan was less than a million pounds off the top of my head wow um, so we had, um, you know, quite a decent sized business at that point, and, um, it came to the point where we were exploring different funding lines. And how do we grow beyond having this private investor capital running off spreadsheets? We didn't have a sort of system at that time. We did, we did, maybe we did.
Speaker 1:I think you invested I remember in Mark.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we have Mark who's actually here with the business now. But I think Mark and my dad kind of wanted to keep steady. The ship, everything's fine, things are going really well, business is going really well and Stephen and I were thinking, no, we're onto something here and we should try really hard to take it to the next level.
Speaker 4:So we agreed basically to try and sell the business and see what we could do next, with us remaining and the two of them exiting the business, yeah, so you.
Speaker 1:so you had your dad and Mark, who are a bit older, wanted a bit more of a steady life, happy with the organic growth that you were seeing, and you guys would have been early 30s at that point maybe Not even early 20s.
Speaker 1:And were obviously, you know, kind of growth, growth, growth and we want to keep going. And you know we're on different trajectories here, which you know again, is rather because sometimes the business implodes at that point as well. You see it with other founders where their partners don't get on and the business goes to complete crap. But you guys, even at that age with obviously the other two, had the foresight that it's not working and actually we just need to separate off and you guys go and do your thing and we'll go and do our thing.
Speaker 3:I mean, that sounds simple, simple even in the sort of difficult moments. But thinking back to the amount of difficult conversations and individual collective you with me with mark, with him with mark and my dad, everyone was sort of it felt like apart from stephen and I, everyone was literally going in a different direction at that point if you was keep everything moving in the right direction was a full-time job in itself.
Speaker 1:If you was back now advising yourself at that point because there's a lot of business owners that will be in a similar situation what advice would you give yourself now? That's a good question.
Speaker 3:Have more confidence. I think there were times and we've talked about this since where we thought, you know, we maybe didn't have the confidence that we should have had. You know, because part of it is what. What are we risking here? You know, the downside could outweigh the upside. If you end up with nothing and you've had this great business and just because you had an ambition to go in some direction, if you end up left with nothing so I think that was definitely in the back of our heads um, we'd had, you know, sort of threats held over us about you know, you can't do this without me and obviously you question yourself, when you're still in our 20s, at that point, um, I think the reality is it worked out pretty well and the balance actually of going through all those conversations, I think we ended up in a good place and I don't think I'd do too much differently I think the one thing I would do differently, just thinking about it for the last minute, is negotiate harder on the deal which we took.
Speaker 4:I think we probably left a bit on the table and I think we showed our hand a bit too early, showing ourselves to be a bit too.
Speaker 1:So this was to the person that you sold the business to. This is to the Enra Group.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that was backed by Living Bridge, which is a private equity firm, and also part of our issue was that we were selling the business to Danny Waters, who was kind of leading the transaction as the CEO of Enra and he was our biggest distributor.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 4:So he had some leverage over us.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And Mark as well, had some perceived leverage over us in regards to the investors and potentially causing us issues. Albeit that didn't happen. Yeah, there was a risk and a concern for us, so we felt a little bit backed into a corner at the time, even though we weren't yeah, because in reality we didn't need enterprise distribution.
Speaker 4:There's loads out there. And they were our biggest distributor and so what? And then, in regards to Mark, we had a great business that had lent probably half a billion pounds up until that point, with lots of happy investors, lots of happy customers. We had strength and we were running the business, we were operating it and we were very good at what we did.
Speaker 4:And, as Duncan said about the confidence point, I think we just felt a little bit like we need to trade yeah there's a problem, we need to trade and obviously we don't have a crystal ball, so we don't know what would happen if we didn't, and it may have been that it was exactly the best move, how we did it, because it went very well. I think it has worked out very well. Yeah, it's worked out well, but that's the one bit of advice I would give myself Negotiate a bit harder and, as Duncan said, have a bit more confidence.
Speaker 3:Yeah. The main thing is, though, what I think is really important is you take those lessons into your next negotiation. So it's less for me looking back and thinking that's why I don't do it very often and I'm not sure what could we have done differently or better? More important is what would I do next time? What did I learn?
Speaker 4:I was so focused on the fact that we need them to do a deal to sort out the shareholder issue, worrying about distribution, worrying about capital. But in reality, all of the parties who bought into us needed us just as much, if not more. Mark and David needed it for the cash because they got cash off the table, and Danny and the Enra group and Livingbridge needed it because they needed a lender, because they were always going to. The view was always to acquire a broking firm from Livingbridge, acquire a lender and have the distribution linked in. So they needed to acquire a lender and we were a perfect partner for them. Yeah.
Speaker 4:So I think we just maybe downplayed to ourselves how much everyone needs us, and then we may have negotiated a little bit harder at certain points, it's experience, though, isn't it?
Speaker 1:And you won't, and you don't know what you don't know. And at the point it was your first rodeo, yeah, and now you're in your multiple, you know multiple rodeo and you know, obviously it's, you know it's, it's interesting. But at that point of you know, taking your experiences and learning from them is super important, and not focusing on the negative, actually focusing on how it can make you stronger. So let's talk about private equity then. So there's been a lot of private equity put into financial services in general, especially into financial planning, where consolidators have come in. A lot of people don't realize what it's like to work, you know. So it sounds great. Private equity comes in, buys your business, gives you big money, but then what you know then? Then what happens? And obviously you both had different experiences and both did different things, and obviously you're back together now, which we'll come on to. But so you'd started west one. There was four of you. You build it up to a hundred million pound loan, but you then sold it to a private equity backed business. How was that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean it was an amazing experience, lots of lessons learned. The most of the, the lesson that I always recall and that I talk about, is I remember our first ever board meeting where we started talking about last month and how it had gone and what our performance was, and sort of pretty soon into that it was like why are we still talking about last month? Let's start talking about next month. And that was a kind of light bulb moment for me, thinking don't spend too much time analyzing what you've done. Try to think about what you're going to do moving forward. Um, I think there can be two different examples. One is if the business goes well and one is if the business doesn't go well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think private equity from my experience, they do a very good job at protecting themselves. It's not um a sort of, it's much more of a calculated investment and they try to um cover their downside. Um, I think right at the beginning it's probably fair to mention that we had discussed, we had meetings with the private equity company um individual assessments and all sorts of stuff before we came on board, and they identified that I was a kind of flight risk. It was like, well, we're not sure he's going to be here after this deal completes is that?
Speaker 1:did you say that specifically?
Speaker 3:I think I was very open I think you know, as you know me exactly pretty well, wear my heart on my sleeve there was no. I think they graded us all. I'm just, yeah, thinking back now yeah, we had some. Yeah, we had sort of sight I got a better grade. I'm sure you did. Um, that's the theme there no competition.
Speaker 3:There's a theme there, but it was. I was sort of identified. They went into the transaction knowing that I might not like it, I might not last very long, and actually I lasted for two years, so two years longer than sort of some people thought, and I think there were-, but was that to prove them wrong? No, I think there were bits that.
Speaker 1:I enjoyed and there were bits that I didn't enjoy.
Speaker 3:I mean, no, I sort of I didn't stay against my will or for an earn out or for anything like that, but I did. The day I woke up and pulled my duvet over my head and thought I don't want to go to work, today is the day that I started texting people and saying I don't think I can do this.
Speaker 1:I remember you called me when you quit and you was downstairs having a cigarette and, like I've just quit, I remember the conversation very, very well.
Speaker 3:I mean that was a bit of a surprise, timing wise. It was a bit abrupt and, no, there was a big risk along the way.
Speaker 1:I remember but was it abrupt, had it been leading up to that.
Speaker 3:It had been leading up to it for sure. I mean, you know, I was sort of conforming less and also being asked to do things that I felt when I wasn't adding as much value as I was before.
Speaker 3:So my role got narrowed and narrowed and narrowed and narrowed as the business got bigger and brought more people in and you know my sort of role was more front end sales, which clearly I was good at and I enjoyed, but I wasn't then allowed to do this and I wasn't allowed to do that. There was obviously a big issue with my dress code and I know it's something you wanted to talk about today. Obviously I've toned that down a lot now, but there were those sort of things coming up which I just felt weren't good for me, weren't good for the business, and Danny had always said let me know when you've had enough. So after those two years came, I feel like just thinking back now it was a bit more abrupt. I mean, there was no, I think. I do think we'd always thought we would always think and talk about life after that. Definitely wasn't us both done there forever, it's just I was sort of more focused on let me get out.
Speaker 4:I think in your mind, we'd sold the business. So we'd sold the business. You took some money off the table. You were now working in effect, for the board, not for yourself anymore, and it was different and you were being told this is what your role is and you wanted to be free.
Speaker 3:That's how I saw it, yeah, and if you think, going back from we started in our bedroom, made every single decision. The buck stopped with us to you've got a job and you need to be here and I'm employed, Employed, literally employed which I hadn't been in for a very long time. Then it was difficult Tough.
Speaker 1:And how did you find it? Duncan's now left and you're left there on your own, having worked together for your whole pretty much career so far together, and then you're left there. How was your experience with it?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean I had a great experience with a private equity firm talking about the private equity element first, and I got on with both private equity firms. I worked with living bridge and exponent the partners there very well. Uh, I learned a lot, not about our business, just in general, how they conduct themselves and how they hold meetings and that sort of thing. Uh, it was very light touch for us. So we'd have monthly board meetings, catch-up calls every now and then, but because the business was going well, they let us run it and left to our own devices. If it wouldn't, then maybe it'd been very different.
Speaker 4:Post Duncan, it wasn't such a big adjustment because we've always kind of done different things. Yeah, even though we've done the same thing, we haven't, like held each other's hand through it. So he would go to a meeting, I would go to a different meeting. We wouldn't attend the same meetings because we don't need to attend the same meetings. So it felt less different day to day, it more. So, just picking up the phone, I think we spoke less More. So this is going on. This is going on Strategy planning. It was that sort of thing.
Speaker 4:That was more of a kind of change. Yeah, but you just get used to things so quickly but you come after one week of something different. You're used to it.
Speaker 1:You know in life you complement each other, don't you?
Speaker 3:yeah, really well we did still speak quite a lot, so I would say we probably still spoke every day. Yeah we just didn't sit next to each other yeah yeah, I do remember when I left, it was my emails switched off, had gone from having like 150 emails a day to, uh, I think it took like two weeks from me saying I'm leaving, to me going into the boardroom and saying like duncan's leaving, bye-bye, and everyone give me a clap, and then my phone basically got switched off.
Speaker 3:I remember like the next morning waking up and being like, oh, no emails. What am I going to do next? Um, but still stayed sort of really close to what was going on there, but you did years after, after I left.
Speaker 4:Yes, I left in late 2019, early 2020 I remember so I did another four years after you left. Yeah, uh, and yeah, it was hard slog. Danny's a phenomenal CEO, so he's the CEO of the group. And then me, danny and Emily sat on the board and I worked very closely with Danny and I learned a lot from Danny as well.
Speaker 4:Danny's a great operator. Enjoyed working with him. Very different management style to me and it was good to. It was a good experience. Worked very closely with our chairman, david Campbell, who you've met, who's a fantastic guy and a great operator as well. So we had a great team around us. There was a clear vision for the firm. You just get your head down and get on with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Execute, Execute exactly, and then so you left in 2019, uh, and then obviously, you guys are back together now, but there was, you know, I remember, when you left the business and we see this with people when we go and purchase their businesses that it's that what you do next. Uh, of you know, when you left, steven, you had, you know, as always, you know, in my mind, you're very clear and you know what's you're gonna do and you go, go and do it. But when you had left, there wasn't a clear path for both of us at completely different times, which is the big adjustment.
Speaker 3:So for me, part of my agreement was I wasn't allowed to do anything lending or broking related yeah um, which is all I've known for the last 10 years and I've made a success in so it was. There wasn't really a clear vision. We had this investment company together, which we still own today. So we had a company called Brian Lloyd Limited. It's what we call a mini family office kind of private equity venture capital style business. Everything that we'd learned as things had gone well for us, we started putting more money into that business with the idea of sort of what our future might hold.
Speaker 3:And one of the first meetings I had I took a serviced office in Elstree pretty much the next day. So I didn't you know, I put little Brian Lloyd plaque up on the door and sent you a picture. I didn't you know, I put little Brian Lloyd Plack up on the door and sent you a picture. And one of the first meetings I had was with Gary Kane from PBM. I started catching up with friends, seeing what's going on in the world and we ended up buying 75% of that company, which is still owned today.
Speaker 3:So they do residential block management and that business manages kind of 10, 12 000, maybe more 12 000 property units um leasehold properties in big blocks of flats, um. So yeah, I was sort of starting to think about what I would do next and I was allowed to buy and sell property and that was something I knew and I ended up doing some property deals where we bought some property, spent some money, added some value, sold some, kept some. But those I think one sort of piece of advice is that those non-competes go quite quickly when you're in it.
Speaker 3:It feels like forever. And I know when I then started Tab, stephen was still working for a competitor. That was, you know, possibly a difficult time, um, in our relationship as far as what you can share, what you can't share, maybe more barriers than we'd been used to, but still kind of wishing each other the best. Um, still talking about other investments we had together. Um, and then I felt like my non-competes kind of lifted quite quickly so I had two years, which I think was longer than two years.
Speaker 3:I had two years so I left in 2016, wasn't allowed to do it till 2018 and I kind of said to the outside world I'm not going back into lending. I felt like, you know, I'd sort of done my time and I wanted to lift my head above the parapet and see what else was going on in the world. And here we are, kind of 500 million pounds later.
Speaker 3:But when you left and I'm sure you can talk more to it you wanted to have a plan, for you knew what you couldn't do and we both always wanted to honour our commitment to the letter. There was no question of kind of me building a lending business during my non-competes and then coming out it was I just wasn't doing it until then. Kind of me building a lending business during my non-competes and then coming out it was I just wasn't doing it until then. Um, and then you had this idea around national housing group, yeah, and we sat down and talked about that loads until you said I'm gonna do that I'll tell you about national housing group yeah, let's go for it, yeah on the topic.
Speaker 4:Uh. So when I left uh, early 2020, yeah, just before covid uh put a business plan together to buy property for social housing purposes, trying to get double digit returns. So I was thinking to myself got some money, I want to make some money on my money to live, because I've no longer got a salary, employment from West One one. So I thought if I can put money into residential property and if I can get long-term contracts with either housing associations or local authorities, getting circa 10% return on my money, then I kind of planned out that it'll be enough for me to live on and to cover my expenses as a worst-case scenario. And it's a really good business as well.
Speaker 4:Potentially, uh, fast forwarding. I kind of identified if you could buy property at relatively cheap per square foot in a certain area, the local authority housing allowance rate in that area might be high. So in each area you've got different, obviously different value assets but the lha rate might be the same. So I was thinking target the cheapest properties in the highest LHA rate areas and we did a very basic spreadsheet algorithm looking at what areas to target, to maximize and where we are today. We've done about 200 units. We've got some long-term leases in place, some short-term agreements in place as well with local authorities, with housing associations, and we've achieved over what we were looking to achieve at the time but it's been a tough market as well, so you know property prices have been hit and it's harder to sell
Speaker 4:stock, and the mortgage market as well, has has changed significantly from 2020 to where we are today, but thankfully, because we're looking at high returns, even with the additional costs added to the business from bill costs to mortgage costs we're still able to keep going and chugging along in a good way. So it's fortunate. That was our model back then and the business is still going today and going well. I think we've both been pretty good at sort of thinking things through and the get.
Speaker 3:The theme there is having each other to bounce things off. So I can remember some ideas where I've sat up all night done a little five-page pitch deck and he's like that's a stupid idea and I'm like yeah, no, you're probably right. Yeah, um, and I remember sitting in your living room and you saying I've put this little thing together around the national housing group. I was like sounds interesting. And one thing that you had always said was that if you were going to leave it would be for something better.
Speaker 3:Maybe seeing me leaving without much of a plan, um, you're like I think there are bridging finance and lending money on property is a good risk. Adjusted return If you get the risk side right and you understand how to originate and how to collect loans, it is a good risk. Adjusted return I think you were keen to make sure you had something equal to or better and, as you said, on the National Housing Group side, it was to make the same sort of returns but also to potentially participate in the upside, in the growth of property. And we we know and have known property inside out. We've seen how to get it right, but we've seen lots and lots of people get it wrong, where you work for two, three years and the only person that gets paid is the bank or the lender, um, and I think that's the bit that we both latched on to, and it's probably be interesting to go back and look at that original pitch deck.
Speaker 4:It's probably quite similar to how the business operates. Yeah, like the old West.
Speaker 1:One, one that we did in 2007.
Speaker 4:Yeah, for sure Do you still?
Speaker 4:look at that. No, I haven't looked at it for a while. Every now and then it pops up. But with National Housing, I think what turned me onto it is when I was at West One s1. Uh, we lent on quite a lot of social housing stock, okay, and it was terrible. The quality of the properties were terrible, uh, and I just thought this needs to be done better, or it can be done better for sure. And then looking into, could you have a viable commercial business that makes money while doing it better?
Speaker 4:And what we do is we do. We've got a whole green initiative that we do. So we put solar panels, air source heat pumps, all that sort of thing to minimize the energy costs, and what we're looking at is really EPC. So how cheap is it going to be for the individuals to live there? Because that was a key factor for us. We also do things like put the internet in the properties, and our view is that if we give them a better property that's newly refurbished and finished, they will keep it in a better condition, whoever's living there, which is which has happened broadly. And what's also happened is that local authorities want to work with us because our properties are better than comparable properties from other landlords. Yeah, so we've spent a little bit more in terms of refurb and cost, but I think we've got a better product and better relationships as a result of it.
Speaker 3:It's really interesting Coming back in full circle as well, remembering right at the beginning where Stephen was a bit unsure about the sort of short-term lending and whether that was good for you know, like a good, positive thing to do, I think, ethical, definitely. Felt, you felt strongly and I definitely resonated with me that the social housing, cleaning up that sector, providing good housing for homeless or for you know, like a million people in the UK that are on a waiting list for housing.
Speaker 3:Um could be really good um, and something that I think we both enjoyed.
Speaker 4:I think you always want to look back at your career and think I helped people, Not help people, but I did the right thing. You know, I made the right decisions, the right ethical decisions, at the right time.
Speaker 1:Obviously we're here to make money.
Speaker 4:And we're going to make money and we're going to maximise whatever we can maximise, but it would be nice to look back and think I never screwed anyone over. I never screwed anyone over. I was always honest. I did the right thing in every scenario. Yeah, and that's what we always try to do, and I think that's the theme of National Housing Group.
Speaker 1:And it's played really well for you guys because you guys have been very successful with what you've done so far. So let's just kind of recap on the history so zero at Westwell, when you sold the first time, you had 100 million under management and then we sold again, which when Duncan wasn't there in 2017. Then you had how much there?
Speaker 1:Our loan book then was probably about a billion A billion and then when you exited the business, it was about two and a half billion. So two and a half billion of loans across regulated mortgage.
Speaker 4:Well regulated bridging finance yeah buy to let mortgages yeah second charge mortgages, development finance and bridging finance so basically you become an insanely large lend uk non-bank lending business there was one point during covid where I speak to people at west one and they were the biggest non-bank lender in the uk.
Speaker 1:That's insane in terms of monthly volume. How does that feel like? Just sitting back and reflecting? That's something you guys started from your bedroom with two of you. And you've become the biggest non-bank lender in the UK.
Speaker 3:That makes me feel like I know what the art of the possible is.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And that's with Tab.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's with Tab and everything that we do Like from Small acorns. You know there are. If you don't go out and grab these opportunities, there is a queue of people that will and to be able to see it through. We've said recently actually I don't think we look back and kind of pat ourselves on the back. Very often it's not that nice that we started in our bedroom. What's nice is that it still exists, that people are still borrowing from it, that it's still got a good reputation, the investors still associate us with it.
Speaker 3:So I think it was helpful when I started again that I'd had a very positive story in the same space. It was very easy to open doors and I remember other sort of lenders when I started tab again saying to me how have you managed to start again and start building a loan book? And I think the answer is that I knew loads of people. You know I'd had a positive, had lots of friends in the industry, I'd done it for a long time and a lot of those people have kindly re-engaged with us again investors, brokers, brokers, borrowers, um which had a meeting with a borrower out there before this meeting who borrowed money from us when I was at west one and um and has borrowed money from us again now because it's a relatively small community.
Speaker 3:I think people don't realize these things come back around. You know, the one reason to treat people nicely is not just kind of treat people the way you want to be treated, but they will come back around. Yeah, um same with all the private equity contacts with david campbell's of this world, with you know all of these um, you know contacts will come around again.
Speaker 1:It's building a network of kind of positive experience, and and delivering on what you said you were going to do and you know, and and being ethical.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and try do and and you know and, and, and being ethical, yeah, and try not to sell yourself, yeah, Even if I was rationally thinking, you know you can very easily get carried away.
Speaker 3:Even if you break up and move on, you do it in the right way. Yeah, you know you don't, it's because things don't always work. I think the focus I mean two things I feel like focus on technology. So bear in mind, when we started West One as Stephen said, there was lots of West One talk today, but I guess that's the theme of the story but when we started West One, people didn't have devices in their pocket.
Speaker 3:You can go out for dinner, split the bill with your friends over dinner, sort of have trade, online trading accounts and a lot changed from a technology perspective. So I think when it came to starting Tab again, I always felt like using technology to our advantage from the start would be important, probably invested a lot of time, energy and money into that at a very early start when we didn't really need it, but I felt confident that we were going to get there and I didn't want to have to sort of implement it later down the line. And to me that is just access to real-time information. When I look back to those board meetings that we were just discussing, from the early days I had to wait till my board meeting to know what my loan book was at the end of the month before, because I had to wait for the financial 10 days to turn around for everything to be totted up. And now I can take my phone out and tell you what my loan book is right now. I can tell you how many investors, the geographical um spread of all of our loans. I can tell you all sorts of data and um.
Speaker 3:I think data has become really important and what I have learned is that you think you know what's going on in your business, but the data doesn't lie.
Speaker 3:So when you look at the data, you learn things in real time and it helps you to make adjustments which you can use to your advantage, and that's something that I feel was different. Although other businesses have probably caught up now, I think you could easily get left behind if you don't have that caught up now. I think you could easily get left behind if you don't have that. I think the other thing that Tab, as you well know, my kind of focus has been on not just allowing investors to access loans secured on property, but to access direct ownership in property, and it's kind of almost like an obsession of mine, definitely something we've debated over the years, where you know Stephen's been sort of critical of great idea, but how does this actually work in practice? What bits are important? Sometimes the fluffy bits that are important to me about opening up real estate to everybody, stephen's more like okay, but in practice, who is that and how are you going to get them and is it worth?
Speaker 3:it how much does it cost to acquire them, and it's taken years for these sort of ideas to formulate and, in the meantime, just trying to build a good lending business, leverage on the return, build a good brand. And we've achieved some significant milestones since we started. So 2018, first opened the doors of TAB. Since then, we've lent 550 million pounds. Loanbook currently stands today at just under 250 million pounds.
Speaker 3:Started with private investors, again this time around using technology so they could sign up online, log in, see their statements in real time, but then have gone through some of the steps that we learned from our previous firm. So most sort of obvious recent example is raising 300 million pounds from NatWest private securitization, something we weren't able to do last time around on our own when we were trying to grow the business, but with the lessons and the skills and the network that I'd obtained during the first rodeo, that felt like it wasn't something that it was a case of how am I going to do it. It's just a case of I am going to do it. So that's been a big, big step for the business. It's meant that we can now start to venture into these different products that we just talked about. Participated in West One's growth, so the biggest change has been we've become a mainstream mortgage lender. We offer 10-year commercial mortgages with the support of NatWest and our American partners as well. So yeah, business has been really good, it's a big business now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a big business. Now, some challenges as well. I think about timing. It's been challenging growing a team again, getting the culture right. You know understanding where risk sits with um, increasing interest rates, inflation, wars, diseases. You know all the sorts of things. I won't go into more detail. Um, I think you just learn to navigate these things with more confidence one usp, I would add, it's not actually usp is ai can I have more than one?
Speaker 4:yeah, maybe, yeah we've put a lot of emphasis on ai development, which we started probably a year ago I would say, uh, before. Ai was the hottest topic, as it is today, and and what we're trying to do, really what we're doing. What we've done is we've allowed almost everything, if we wanted to, to be run by AI to an extent such as AI will go through the ID for the client. It will cross-reference it against the systems that we use to check clients' ID. It will upload it into the right place. It will then give you a summary of what it's found in various documents, and we haven't moved away from manual underwriting.
Speaker 4:So, all of the underwriters will read every document, go through everything as they were doing before, but we've got very clear summaries and someone additional to check, which is AI.
Speaker 4:So an underwriter can miss something and they can also miss something in isolation. That might be a risk issue, because if the borrower lives 200 miles away from their solicitor and they're mortgaging a £5 million house and they live in a £100,000 council flat, there's a red flag. I'm giving a kind of far-fetched example. There's a red flag. I'm giving a kind of far-fetched example. But what AI will do with all the rules we've put in place with kind of fraud protection, credit risk protection tools? It will flag certain things. So I see it as a massive benefit to the business and I don't believe any of the other specialist lenders are using it the way we are at the moment and there's much more to come as well.
Speaker 4:As I said before, we're not going to go away from an underwriter turning the pages of a file. I turn the page of the file when I sign it off, so do you, so there's no additional risk. It should just help us find any issues that we might have and also analyze what's gone wrong in the past, which is also what it's doing. It's saying you've had these defaults. This case is similar, for this isn't this reason. Have you checked this? This is the reason for the default, so it gives us much more analysis over the back foot and past performance to predict future trends and future issues so enabling you to scale your business, isn't it, without having to employ loads of extra headcount and training.
Speaker 4:That to make them and make the best possible decisions as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah which is super important because I remember, as you've always said to me, both of you, which is anyone? There'll be a queue of people there to borrow the money, but getting the money back is another thing and ultimately, you two have been really successful with that during your own time as well. I mean, you've done phenomenally well with that, which is again something that can ultimately be optimized now, utilizing technologies that are available to you, and you're not an old, clunky firm Like you never had that mentality. It's always been pushing things to the you know, to the next level from your you know, from the investor statements that you send out to you know which I get, because I've invested personally into loans and into the businesses that you guys have. You know it's remarkable what you've accomplished over that time. So you know, and it's really, really cool, thank you. How are you finding being back working together now? Because you are, because obviously you know so.
Speaker 1:Duncan left, stephen stayed, stephen left, duncan was in tab, but there was that non-compete that we talked about. Non-compete's ended, yeah. So you know what? Now it's great working back with Duncan. I mean, it feels It'd be pretty bad if you said it was horrendous. I want a divorce Day to day Seamless, I would agree.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Day to day.
Speaker 4:We very rarely have meetings together. I mean probably one or two a month, yeah, sitting in the same meeting, uh. So, yeah, we've each got our roles. That we're doing we each. You know, we know what each of us are supposed to be doing. Uh, duncan's the ceo of the business, uh, and it's clear. It's clear what I need to do. It's clear what he needs to do. I'm still involved in national housing group as well. We're some really good people in that business. Uh, so I'm loving it. I'm loving being busy amazing being back in lending and working with duncan.
Speaker 3:You know it's amazing for me because I've now got you know somebody who I trust and value sort of more day-to-day invested in the business. So I would have sort of called about trials and tribulations of all these things before and I guess the reason it's seamless is because we you know Stephen, when he started National Housing Group took an office in the same building so, you know, started to spend more time together again. But to be able to share the responsibility of running, as you said, is a big business with funding lines and reporting requirements and ever-changing team all the way down from sort of admin staff to senior management. These things are changing all the time. So to be able to share the burden of that and to allow us to play to our strengths more has been game-changing for the business.
Speaker 3:I mean you can't recruit. You know I wouldn't be able to go out and recruit Stephen the experience of how we work together, understanding of the business and risk, and the people. It's like the dream signing.
Speaker 1:It's getting the messy over to Miami.
Speaker 3:It's like getting Roberto Carlos over to TAB Into your office, yeah.
Speaker 1:So one of the you know, and I think that's, I think that's it again with partnerships and it keeps bringing it back. It's like a lot of people get one plus one and it's one because they overlap each other a lot, whereas it seems like you guys get one plus one equals three. You know you're getting, you're getting so much more, which is which is cool and it's really exciting for tab now as well, because obviously you guys were doing well before, but adding steven into the mix again with you guys now that's only going to propel you guys on to do, yeah, bigger and better things going. We're not that there's no.
Speaker 3:Genuinely. It's not like jobs for the boys, it's not like right now, free to. I mean, it couldn't be further from the opposite. In fact, we'd be the first people to say to each other look, I don't think you should be doing that, I can deal with that.
Speaker 4:On my own um. I don't need your help?
Speaker 3:yeah, I don't need your help on this. I don't think it's more like. You know. It was perfect timing. Um, when Stephen was finally free and we've been talking about you know, could you want to actually take a proper role? Um, then we went out fundraising. We had the sort of team that we went fundraising with before and I felt the opportunity to bring Steven in and to leave some of the other people behind, because I just felt we could do a better job in a quicker period of time. So, just, it was just obvious for the business. And if it's not obvious for the business and you're trying to do it, to just don't do it. And that's the thing about what you said right at the beginning about working with your friends. I think it's that sort of I know I'm going to get the honest kind of I need you on this, or please keep your mouth shut in this meeting.
Speaker 1:Don't come. What is next for Tab?
Speaker 3:I'll ask you both that scratching the surface yeah, genuinely, you know the AI stuff, the whole innovation piece around the business, I think is a huge, huge opportunity. I think financial services, whatever reason, has always lagged behind on technology and it shouldn't do. Technology moves ridiculously fast.
Speaker 4:No, banking systems they use, we still use. Now it's mind boggling yeah.
Speaker 3:The legacy systems are. It's frightening, absolutely agree, but then it's like what we haven't even thought of yet. The size of the opportunity in the UK is enormous. There's, you know, commercial mortgages roughly 50 billion a year of commercial mortgages written every single year. Currently we're doing like 100 million. So in itself we've got these kind of different businesses within tab that all need their own strategy, their own management, their own growth plan, execution, um.
Speaker 3:Bridging finance is something that's been the sort of engine room of the business. We've got a long way to go with capturing market share, um, and just sort of leveraging on what we've done. But moving into adjacent products and I think unlocking property property ownership is something that I'm obviously passionate about at some point. Yeah, it's just sort of starting to become a reality and the size of the opportunity is vast and I feel like it's kind of a bit like my purpose, something that I'm passionate about. I think real estate is incredibly clunky. It's. People are attracted to the uk because it has a well-trodden legal path and, you know, robust economy. Even with all the sort of turbulent, turbulent times, um, the uk, even though it's a tiny little island in the middle of the ocean, still kind of attracts a lot of money and a lot of people, and I think the I feel genuinely like we're scratching the surface. We've got an amazing platform to grow from.
Speaker 4:We need to make the right decisions and we need to get on with it so I think we're going to follow the same path sorry, chris as west, one really, which is add new products to what we do, which will be development finance probably in time, regulated bridging, more traditional buy-to-lets and work on tech, as Duncan was saying, to really have a best-in-class offering in that respect, to allow us to scale with our huge headcount and also in a more controlled way, and then grow. The loan book is the plan I'm sure. Keep going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, keep going. Do you guys see you exiting again or going forever?
Speaker 4:We don't really talk about exiting. You're not.
Speaker 1:It's funny because you were so focused on it the first time.
Speaker 4:Yeah, now it's more income.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Now you want to build a good business and have good income. It to be sustainable and controlled, and maybe we're more than I think david now than we were.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean I think the point is, the better the business is doing, the more attractive it becomes to the outside world and the less you actually need to do a deal. When we were younger, we'd never had a capital event in our lives before, so it was like almost like winning the lottery you know, we'd started this company. It event in our lives before, so it was like almost like winning the lottery. You know we'd started this company. It cost 10 pounds to register it on the company's house.
Speaker 3:We owned the equity, we created this equity and one day we will learn how much every one percent could be worth. Um, I don't see myself starting another lending business again. I really like what we do. Um, I like the fact that we help people on every side of the business. You know people who need money. We provide it quickly. People who want to deploy capital get a good return. I'm super proud of what we've done and think that it's just. The opportunity is so vast. It would be like if we cashed in our chips too early last time. Then we're miles away from considering. One thing we've done well, I think that I've been super focused on from the beginning is to understand the value of equity.
Speaker 3:So, it's quite unusual to have a quarter of a billion pound loan book owned privately. You know, by this point in most businesses life, private equity would be desperate to get their teeth into it. There's enough track record. There's enough policies, policies, processes. You've been there, you've eliminated enough of the risks that I think it would be a very good bet, yeah, for a private equity firm to go down this path that we've been down before. Um, so yeah, I want to take the business as far as physically possible super interesting and you're obviously clearly both on the same page yeah, for sure, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:Which is we? Should have that chat.
Speaker 1:It's like Stephen turns and goes. No well, I actually I thought completely differently. You know that's, that's, that's really cool. So you know, we'll kind of wrap it up now.
Speaker 1:But in terms of, you know, one question I've asked everyone that I've interviewed, so far and you are my third, you know, know, my third uh interview, so I've warmed up now. Yeah, um, hopefully won't be my last, but what you guys have had an amazing career so far. You've been through so much, been very entrepreneurial, you know, clearly you love running businesses, which I think is a skill in itself, and a lot of people underestimate that when they start start off on their own looking back to someone just getting into financial services now, what piece of advice would you offer them, steven?
Speaker 4:I would say work hard and believe, because I think there's a lot of times where your belief can waver yeah and belief is infectious as well if you believe, people around you believe and it happens.
Speaker 4:And a lot of times, people, everyone's going to get knocked. There's going to be knocks in what everyone's doing. You have a great business plan, do x, y and z, but you need to believe and be 100%, go for it, 100% committed, believe and be positive and I think that's what we've kind of given each other a little bit like we believe completely. Whatever we do, it's going to happen. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And everyone around us believe, and then it manifests and happens. And you know, I think, without the belief, if you sell, if you doubt yourself and you don't believe, it's very hard to make it work. Yeah.
Speaker 3:The theme of this podcast has been confidence, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:From my point of view, I'd say do something that you like and that you believe in as well. I find it very easy to sell something that I would buy myself. And. I find it literally impossible to sell something that I don't believe in. So I think it's important to be passionate about the path that you're going down and that's different things to different people because otherwise you get sort of bored and distracted and your head gets turned by things that maybe interest you or excite you more.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, look, that was a real pleasure and obviously I've heard bits and pieces as we've gone through throughout the years of knowing each other, but to put it all together has been really eye-opening for me and, selfishly, it's great to have some lessons from true financial service legends such as yourself so it's useful and, yeah, I'm sure it will be thanks for having us thank you very much, cheers, guys, cheers.
