Certain Bridge 2 – History

Gary Hall is a bit of a live wire. As a boy, he was a maths whizz - a working class lad whose parents invested in getting him the best education they could. Grown up and already with an impressive CV in property finance, he took the growth of alternative lending as a clarion call to join up with his co-founder and start Certain Bridge and offer their clients something the big banks can't - fast finance.

Gary Hall kicked off in commercial real estate finance and was headhunted into high volume retail finance - where he noted that if you could finance things more quickly than another firm, speed was a major competitive advantage. That's something he's made a founding principle of Certain Bridge, the alternative lender he set up with his codirector in early 2018.

Certain Bridge provide bridging finance - short term mortgage loans intended to help property developers, property investors and Business entrepreneurs, snap up deals quickly, or navigate a tricky period without rearranging their long-term financial arrangements. For instance, an investor might need fast approval of a loan to make a downpayment on a piece of land - the loan can be repaid once the long-term finance package comes through. Or a developer might need some top-up funding to pay their way till they get to a project milestone that unlocks the next tranche of their long-term financing.

In cases like this, speed is very much of the essence. And Certain Bridge provides a speedy decision - the same day, in many cases. That gives Certain Bridge a big advantage over the major banks, which - partly because of their cumbersome processes and the tight regulation applied to retail deposit holding institutions - often take as much as six to eight weeks to approve a loan, let alone arrange for it to be drawn down.

Gary Hall is also refreshingly no-nonsense, and like his co-founder that's something he's brought to the business at Certain Bridge. He's upfront with applicants about what fees and payments are involved, as well as Certain Bridge's higher interest rates relative to, say, the high street banks. "Sometimes," he says, "we have applicants who say 'that's expensive, we can get it for less than that price point from Lloyds'. And we reply 'go to Lloyds then'!" They soon get the point - Lloyds might indeed be cheaper but it won't deliver in time.

But that doesn't mean Certain Bridge is competing with Lloyds. Gary Hall says "We see ourselves as very much not the prime lender - we’re a paramedic rather than a GP." Certain Bridge is the lender you want when you have an accident and need quick attention, whereas a bank can look after a company's health in the longer term.

Long term, foreseeable finance will always be cheaper with a major bank or similar financial institution; where Certain Bridge competes is in short term bridging. Most of Certain Bridge 's loans are in fact refinanced at keener rates later on, once the customer's business has settled down, or once there is time to go through the lengthier approval process for long term lenders.

Certain Bridge also has the advantage of a small but highly experienced central team headed by four senior highly experienced executives, which deal with each customer individually. "Our borrowers are not just numbers," Gary Hall says. He may have been a spreadsheet jockey at the age of nine, but he also knows that any executive team member can call any of his borrowers on the phone and they'll recognise the executives voice, not think which call centre they've got on the line. And it's never, ever a case of "the computer says no" at Certain Bridge; every decision is taken holistically, looking at the whole business, not just the numbers.

Certain Bridge has an expert valuer, Graham Martindale (a member of the executive team), a former regional head of valuations at St Modwen Plc. Graham has the ultimate oversight, where necessary, of new bridge loan security valuations. That's part of Certain Bridge 's strict underwriting process, which ensures that it has a good repayment outcome; a few loans have not been repaid on time, but so far, Certain Bridge hasn't actually had to repossess a single property. Still, the fact that every loan is hard real estate asset-backed and that the company has vetted the market value gives an excellent security cushion if the worst ever happens.

And Certain Bridge is a bit different from many peer-to-peer or crowdlending businesses, brokers and loan packagers, because its loans are made 100% off its own balance sheet. It really has serious “skin in the game", as US crowdfunding analysts like to say - while some of the crowdfunding players don't invest any of their own money at all.


Gary Hall - Certain Bridge - 70 Cassidy House, Station Road, Chester, CH1 3DW  United Kingdom