Alan Cleary: We’ve gone under the radar

Precise lent £2.4bn in 2017, up from £2bn in 2016, making it the UK’s biggest specialist lender.

Alan Cleary: We’ve gone under the radar

Alan Cleary thinks Precise Mortgage has gone under the radar despite being ranked as the UK’s biggest specialist lender by UK Finance yesterday.

Precise lent £2.4bn in 2017, up from £2bn in 2016, making it the UK’s biggest specialist lender.

News coverage has to an extent focused on strong annual lending increases from Foundation Home Loans and Pepper UK (both 200%), with them both lending £300m a piece.

But Cleary (pictured), managing director of Precise, said: “We are clearly the leading specialist lender of the bunch with £2.4bn of lending, which excludes our bridging lending. It’s good news for brokers.

“UK Finance appeared to focus on Foundation’s 200% increase from very little and Pepper, but I think the broker is more interested in the £2.4bn.

“From an intermediary’s point of view we’ve paid eight times in proc fees more than those lenders that have been mentioned.”

Despite seeing a lending increase Precise fell one place in the lender league table from 16th to 17th due to a 50% lending uptick from Metro Bank.

As a whole specialist lenders increased their market share at a higher rate than the top 10 lenders.

But for Clearly this isn’t surprising owing to number specialist players entering the market who are all looking to take market share from the big boys.

He added: “That’s the only way it can work, we take volume.

“Clearly we are finding niches that the big guys aren’t interested in – and that’s why we are growing.”