From capital markets and Credit Suisse to chief commercial officer at a £500m-backed specialist lender
When Rikesh Saujani (pictured top) left Credit Suisse to set up his own consultancy in 2017, he was not looking for another large institution. After more than 15 years in the City – structuring securitisations at Lloyds Banking Group, helping to establish TSB, and expanding Credit Suisse's European credit finance operations – he had reached a conclusion many senior bankers quietly arrive at but rarely act on.
"I was in a faceless organisation where what I did and what I achieved had no real impact on the day to day," he told Mortgage Introducer. "I couldn't see the customer. I couldn't see when I made something or improved a process how that would actually benefit the business."
That restlessness eventually led him to TAB – the London-based real estate finance and investment platform founded in 2018 by chief executive Duncan Kreeger – and to the role he now holds as chief commercial officer (CCO).
He was advising firms on capital-raising and strategic growth when he first met Kreeger and TAB chief operating officer Stephen Wasserman. The relationship built quietly until TAB needed someone with Saujani's particular blend of treasury, capital markets, and commercial instinct to lead its first major institutional funding round. Saujani joined in 2023 as investment director. What followed reshaped both his role and the business.
From transaction to strategy
Closing that deal required Saujani to engage across every function – finance, underwriting, marketing – and in doing so, he found himself asking a different question altogether.
"Rather than look at what I was trying to deliver, it was taking a step back, saying what are we trying to deliver as a business?" he said. "I just kept on taking the next step up and without realising, in discussions with Duncan, we were suddenly like, hold on, what sort of role are you now doing? And it was this much larger, more strategic role."
The shift was not planned. Each conversation pulled him further into the strategic picture – growth targets, technology investment, product development – until the role had effectively redefined itself. Today, when Kreeger has a new idea or is working through where the business is headed, it is Saujani who maps out the implementation – which teams are affected, what needs to change, how the strategy gets delivered.
What TAB does – and why it matters to brokers
TAB sits at the intersection of bridging finance and longer-term mortgage lending, and describes itself as a solutions-led business rather than a product-first one. Saujani is deliberate about the distinction.
"We're trying to understand how and what brokers and borrowers are trying to achieve in their own businesses, and then matching that to what we can provide," he said. "It's much more about listening and understanding than starting with a product and saying this is what we've got for you."
TAB's commercial mortgage product grew directly from this thinking. The business kept seeing the same bridging borrowers, with the same properties and brokers, leave to arrange longer-term finance elsewhere. The logic of retaining that relationship – already underwritten, already trusted – was inescapable.
"We'd already done the hard work," Saujani said. "We knew the property, we knew what they were trying to achieve. Why weren't we doing something about this?"
Discipline at scale and the £500m facility
In September 2025, TAB secured a £500 million funding facility from funds managed by AB CarVal (AllianceBernstein's alternative investment division), powering the full-scale launch of TAB Mortgage and TAB Bridge. TAB Mortgage provides long-term financing for residential, semi-commercial, and commercial properties, while TAB Bridge delivers short-term loans for transactions requiring interim financing.
The business targets mortgage completion in around 60 days – with one recent deal closing in under a month – by applying the same underwriting team, governance, and systems it has used in bridging. For Saujani, the facility also delivers something the current market demands above almost everything else – certainty.
"We have a large funding line behind us which allows us to go into a deal and say, this is what we can do, these are the terms we can provide, and we can stand behind that," he said. "We can give brokers confidence that if TAB has put this deal in front of you, TAB will ensure that it goes ahead."
When a wave of deals entered the market following difficulties at other lenders, TAB chose discipline over volume. Technology is central to sustaining that discipline as the business scales, not to replace underwriters, but to free them from administrative friction so that judgement is applied where it counts.
"We can use AI and automation to help underwriters do all those peripheral tasks better, and then actually just concentrate on is this the right deal for TAB?" Saujani said.
What does the 2026 mortgage market mean for brokers?
On the broader UK mortgage market, Saujani's read is measured. Rates have been held, and Saujani expects the mortgage market to grow by low single-digit figures. But activity, he says, has been slower than demand would suggest. Estate agents in north-west London and Hertfordshire have described housing stock sitting still in ways they have never seen before.
"The market is due to change. There's just this friction over the whole marketplace," he said.
For brokers considering specialist lending options, that friction points towards complex cases and borrowers with a story to tell, precisely where TAB positions itself. The market is price-sensitive, Saujani argues, but demand has not disappeared. People are waiting for the right moment, not walking away.
For Saujani, TAB's trajectory – from private investor capital in 2018 to a £500m institutional facility today – is the argument for what comes next.
"We've gone through a real maturity in the way in which we've grown," he said. "It just puts us in the right place to give brokers and give borrowers the opportunity to have a solution that helps them in their own journeys as well."
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