WHY CHOOSE WINTRUST DEVELOPMENT CAPITAL?

Experience of Founder

• Wintrust Development Capital Ltd ("WDC") was founded by Toby Szpiro 2 years ago, to assist former residential developer customers of Wintrust plc, a merchant bank founded and run by the Szpiro family for 30 years, before it was sold in 2004, for a healthy premium. 

• Wintrust plc was one of the very first specialist lenders to the UK residential development sector, and was highly successful. Its judicious approach to risk together with its inherent flexibility, enabled Wintrust plc to continue lending, uninterrupted, during 3 property crashes.

• Toby played a key part in running Wintrust plc's £150m development loan book, and its subsequent sale. Subsequently, he was one of the founding directors of the real estate finance team at Santander UK plc, which grew over a 5-year period from a new entrant to one of the largest institutional lenders in the UK. 

• Toby has over 30 years’ experience working as both a lender and a developer, across all sectors of real estate.

Culture

• Funded entirely by proprietary capital, WDC understands readily the imperatives that drive entrepreneur developers in creating value.

• WDC’s DNA is to leave no stone unturned in understanding the needs of its customers and supporting them through all property cycles.

• The fact that WDC, and Wintust plc the family business before it, retain a high proportion of its customers as repeat business speaks volumes.

Speed

• As Toby is the sole decision maker and owner, there is no time-consuming credit committee for customers to contend with. 

• As speed of decision making is vital to the entrepreneur developer, WDC’s target is to issue loan documentation post an approved valuation within a period of 3 weeks from receipt of the customer’s detailed appraisal.

• Drawdown requests for construction will be processed within 3 to 5 working days.

Flexibility

We are able to take a view on a diverse range of scenarios that many other lenders cannot because of their larger size. Examples include:

• recognising planning gain so minimising the level of borrower cash equity required day 1; 

• releasing equity to a borrower on a completed and part sold scheme to enable then to acquire a new site, which WDC can also fund; 

• deciding which conditions of a loan can be satisfied pre or post loan drawdown; 

• option of charging higher exit fee and lower interest margin, thereby a lower interest roll up facility and a corresponding higher facility against purchase (so improving borrower returns).