Eddie Trahearn on why a treasury background gives you the fullest picture of a bank and what brokers really need
Eddie Trahearn (pictured top) speaks with the precision you might expect from someone who spent years in specialist lending treasury roles – measured, analytical, unwilling to overstate.
When he describes GB Bank, it is not in the language of products and pipelines. It is in the language of people, momentum, and the collective effort of building something from the ground up.
Trahearn joined GB Bank in 2021 as Head of Treasury and Funding, became Chief Strategy and Financial Officer, and was appointed Chief Executive Officer in April. He succeeded Mike Says, who retired having grown the lending book to approximately £800 million and expanded the balance sheet sevenfold to over £2 billion during his tenure. It is an unusual route to the top of a bank, and one that shaped how he sees the role.
"The role in treasury gives you full visibility across everything," Trahearn told Mortgage Introducer. "You are involved in commercial discussions, operational decision-making, funding, liquidity, risk management – not just financial risk, but other risks throughout the bank, strategic planning, liquidity forecasting. Through a treasury background, you end up with exposure to virtually every single part of a bank."
Most bank leaders arrive through lending or strategy. Trahearn arrived through the function he describes as "the bank's bank" – the department that sits in the middle of everything and, by necessity, understands all of it.
"You can spot where improvements are required, you can praise where it's going well, you've got a way of actually understanding what people are going through and then also how that feeds through the entire journey," he said.
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The business of continuity
Trahearn is quietly resistant to any suggestion that succeeding Says represents a significant pivot. The remit, in his view, is continuation rather than reinvention.
"I actually think it's probably unfair to attribute success just to one person," he said. "Developing a bank is a collective effort. It requires contributions from everywhere across the team."
What he is inheriting is not a finished institution but a bank still very much in motion. "We're still ambitious. We're still scaling. Everything that you've done – the discipline in change, the discipline in process design, the discipline in product design – it all continues. It's maintaining that momentum to create that ongoing success. It's a snowball effect."
GB Bank began as a regional development finance specialist before broadening its offering to support property professionals and non-bank lenders with bespoke structured facilities – arrangements in which the bank provides warehouse or structured funding lines to other non-bank lenders, assessed entirely on their own merits. Trahearn is clear the product evolution was planned, not reactive, though the macroeconomic environment accelerated parts of the timeline. Development finance became increasingly difficult – margins thinned, projects overran, supply chains strained.
"It was the wider macroeconomic environment feeding into and accelerating the launch of new products rather than us developing new products. We had them already on the plan."
Broadening the toolkit
GB Bank built its reputation on bespoke, case-by-case underwriting. Its appearance on sourcing systems such as IRESS, and its listing on Mortgage Advice Bureau panels with simpler buy-to-let and bridging products, marked a meaningful addition to the product toolkit for a lender that continues to build its identity entirely around complexity. The question it raised was obvious. Is the bank moving towards the market, or has the market moved towards it?
Trahearn's answer is that it is both. "We're not moving away from our heritage of bespoke case-by-case underwriting," he said. "But we’re equally responding to what our brokers are now asking as we become a more trusted partner. They have simpler cases that they also want to place, which do require a different pricing structure because the risk-reward is different within those cases."
GB Bank can now accommodate the full spectrum – a simple, accessible product for straightforward cases through sourcing systems, and a bespoke, relationship-managed route for more complex transactions. "Our philosophy hasn't changed," Trahearn said. "The focus remains finding the right outcome for the right client."
Underpinning the bridging side of that proposition is a dedicated team now led by Asim Shirwani. "Rather than having bridging expertise spread across multiple relationship managers and teams, a specialist team can provide greater consistency, faster decision-making, a more efficient overall experience for both the customer and the intermediary," Trahearn said.
Why deposit funding changes everything
GB Bank funds itself almost entirely through retail deposits. Trahearn describes it as "nearly 100% retail funded", and this, he argues, is one of the most significant structural advantages a specialist lender can have.
Lenders relying solely on wholesale or institutional funding lines manage not only their own risk appetite but also that of their funder. That funder's appetite typically sits inside the lender's own, which means cases are sometimes declined not because the lender believes they should be, but because the funding structure does not permit them – a constraint that has drawn increasing scrutiny as more lenders compete for complex deal flow.
"Where lenders are relying solely on wholesale or institutional funding lines, lending decisions are influenced not only by the lender's risk appetite, but also the funder's risk appetite," Trahearn said. "So there are cases that they're missing out on."
GB Bank's retail deposit model changes that calculus entirely. "The advantage of the retail deposit funded model is it allows us to lend within our own risk appetite. We don't bump into those guardrails of someone else. Our deposit customers care about safety and security as much as we do, it's a near perfect match."
Its manual underwriting process – experienced underwriters assessing every nuance of a case on its individual merits – is what allows it to operate in territory automated systems cannot navigate. "It's not a single issue that makes a case complex," Trahearn said. "It's a combination of factors that don't neatly fit within a standard credit model. We look beyond the headline issues and consider the transaction as a whole."
Where the specialist market is heading
The specialist lending market has grown considerably, and the number of lenders describing themselves as specialist has grown with it. Non-standard lending activity has risen steadily in recent years, with borrower circumstances growing more complex across high net worth, property professional and portfolio landlord segments.
"There are way more people describing themselves as a specialist lender," Trahearn said. "But that's balanced by the macroeconomic environment creating an increasing number of complex lending scenarios – high-net-worth individuals, experienced property professionals, evolving ownership structures given tax environments, borrowers navigating challenging market conditions."
His view is that demand for specialist lending will continue to grow, and GB Bank's answer is to keep evolving the proposition rather than pivot or stand still. "We’re constantly evaluating new products, new structures, new ways to meet customer needs rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach.
"Every loan is unique. Every customer has different objectives, different circumstances, different complexities. We see our role as to understand those nuances and find a solution that delivers the right outcome."
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