The Big Interview: Christine Newell on opening up specialist finance

Christine Newell (pictured top) has spent 36 years in the mortgage industry, but she is not interested in looking back. Five months into her role as Head of the Financial Intermediary & Broker Association (FIBA) and Mortgage Training Officer within the Fintel ecosystem, the focus is squarely on what comes next – a fundamental shift in how mainstream mortgage brokers relate to the specialist property finance market.

FIBA holds a position Newell considers genuinely singular as the only trade association embedded within a club or network support structure of its kind in the UK. Its remit spans bridging, commercial, semi-commercial and development finance, and Newell wants it to be the bridge that carries a new generation of brokers into that market.

"My biggest aim is to bring more and more mainstream brokers into this market as the market changes," she told Mortgage Introducer. "Brokers will need to diversify so they can protect, retain and grow their businesses."

What is stopping brokers from making the move?

The barriers are real, but Newell is adamant they are not insurmountable. The most common scenario she describes will resonate with many brokers. A specialist case materialises unexpectedly, the broker approaches a high-street commercial lender, encounters resistance, and either abandons the case or refers it away, often losing the client relationship in the process.

"A broker will come across a commercial case, it will probably slap them in the face rather than them going looking for it," she said. "They would go to a big lender like HSBC Commercial or Barclays Commercial, and those lenders would say, how much business are you actually going to give us? There'll be barriers in the way of that broker trying to submit that deal."

The answer is not a training programme demanding 30 hours of study before a case can be submitted. It is something more incremental – case-led learning, with one deal handled with the right support becoming the foundation for the next. Newell draws an analogy with a barrister's pupillage – structured mentorship, learning in practice rather than in advance.

Language is part of the problem too. Mainstream brokers who recoil from bridging finance would respond very differently if they thought of it simply as a property investment solution, because in substance, that is exactly what it is.

"Specialist property finance is not difficult, it's just different language," she said. "You talk about it as a property investment solution, and brokers are already using property investment solutions via their buy-to-let work. Bridging is just another one of those solutions."

As the bridging market continues to professionalise and brokers face pressure to demonstrate greater value, the ability to engage confidently with specialist cases is becoming a differentiator for firms seeking to protect income long-term.

How does FIBA connect brokers and lenders more effectively?

There are approximately 450 bridging lenders currently operating in the UK. For a newer entrant to that market, differentiation is acute, and it is a challenge FIBA is positioned to help answer in an unexpected way. Rather than directing new lenders towards experienced specialists who will immediately interrogate pricing and criteria, Newell proposes connecting them with brokers entering the space for the first time.

"They're almost like a first-time buyer in the mortgage world," she said. "You can talk to them about the whole market and you're not teaching them to suck eggs, you're helping them learn. And once you, as a broker, get a really good partner in a lender, you keep going back to them. That partnership doesn't end."

The commercial proof of concept already exists. A broker who attended a sourcing system event, recognised a deal type from his own client bank, submitted it with guided support, and subsequently identified more than 20 similar cases – 10 of which have since completed.

"He's earned a significant amount of commission on that compared to doing 10 product transfers at £1,000," she said. "If you've got a banking app, you can do product transfers in three clicks. As we see our younger clients coming through using technology in a much better way, I can see that as a threat to losing that type of business."

Giving smaller firms a platform

Newell's ambition extends to ensuring FIBA is heard as the voice of smaller and developing broker firms. The growth potential is clear. Broker-led SME lending rose 25% year-on-year in 2025 to reach £33 billion, with much of that activity driven by intermediaries outside the major networks. Newell is actively bringing what she calls "unsung heroes" into FIBA events – brokers whose stories of entering specialist finance would not typically surface through the industry's usual channels.

"Those smaller brokers are going to be the bigger brokers in the future," she said. "They can come through FIBA and have a voice."

Building the market intelligence function

One gap Newell found when she joined FIBA was the absence of meaningful market intelligence for specialist property finance. Unlike the residential market – where UK Finance produces regular, granular data on product transfer volumes and remortgage activity – the specialist space lacks an equivalent authoritative source.

"When I came into FIBA, I was surprised – probably slightly shocked – at the lack of market data in the specialist property finance world," she said. "If you get stuff from lenders, it generally reflects their position. There's nothing like UK Finance in the specialist property finance space."

Newell is working to address that, with the longer-term ambition of making FIBA the reference point the market turns to for specialist sector intelligence. The growth in broker-led specialist and SME lending makes the case for better data infrastructure compelling, as without it, brokers cannot easily assess the scale of opportunity in their own regions.

On technology, her view is practical. AI will reshape parts of the advice process, but specialist property finance, with its dependence on judgment and complex deal structures, is well placed to remain a human endeavour.

"The biggest thing for brokers is choosing the parts you want to remain human in your process and using AI to help with the rest," she said.

For Newell, success over the next 12 months will not be measured by membership numbers alone, but by the number of brokers who can recognise a specialist opportunity when one lands on their desk, by stronger lender relationships, and by better outcomes for clients and small businesses.

"Success isn't simply having more FIBA members," she said. "It's really about more brokers who can recognise specialist opportunities and are better-equipped advisers, and those stronger lender relationships and better outcomes for clients and SMEs."

Want to be regularly updated with mortgage news and features? Get exclusive interviews, breaking news, and industry events in your inbox – subscribe to our FREE daily newsletter. You can also follow us on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn.