Housing prices in the UK, including London, are spectacularly high, making it very challenging for first-time buyers to get onto the housing ladder but Proportunity has developed a solution aimed at tackling this problem.
Founded by Stefan Boronea, and Vadim Toader, Proportunity is a technology-driven mortgage lender. Recently, the UK company raised £7.5 million to manage record demand following Britain’s post-lockdown housing boom. The lion’s share of the new debt funding came from Conister Bank.
Douglas Grant, Director of Conister, commented: “The UK’s SMEs have shown an incredible amount of adaptability and resilience in the face of changing consumer behaviour amid COVID-19 pandemic. We are pleased to be able to support Proportunity as it seeks to positively contribute to the dynamics of the UK housing market following the lockdown and to help its customers realise the dream of owning their home.”
Appointed new CFO
The funding will allow Proportunity to help more first-time buyers and accelerate its growth even further. Besides funding, the company hired Marita Cavalcanti (ex-OakNorth, Ebury and Nomura) as its CFO. She will be in charge of expanding their debt capital by drawing in more institutional money towards Proportunity’s lending fund.
Boosting equity loan of up to £90,000
Proportunity provides home buyers with a deposit boosting equity loan of up to £90,000, enabling them to afford the home they love with only a 5% cash deposit. The company is witnessing its biggest first-time buyers demand in a long time due to the ‘work from home’ factor and to take advantage of the new stamp duty relief, but COVID-19 has made getting a mortgage considerably more difficult for them.
While other mortgage lenders are pulling back low deposit products, Proportunity’s home equity loan has become one of the few remaining options available to aspiring homeowners, resulting in high demand.
Vadim Toader, CEO and co-founder of Proportunity commented on recent market dynamics: “When the pandemic hit, we were able to leverage our property market technology to quickly adapt lending decisions, increasing our portfolio’s resilience and continuing to issue loans, where others lenders were forced to pull back mortgage products or put lending on hold entirely. That’s made us the only 5% LTV lender in the UK. Our number of loans has since grown exponentially, and we’re expecting to double our lending book every quarter for the next 6 months.”
As a result, the digital mortgage lender had to implement a waitlist and a £90K cap on newly issued home equity loans. Proportunity has helped finance over £22M worth of properties since it started lending in 2018.
Stefan Boronea, CTO & co-founder of Proportunity: “This year we spent significant time listening to your feedback, fully digitalising and automating the Proportunity Loan application process. This will help us better serve our existing intermediaries by underwriting new loans at a much faster pace. It will also enable us to onboard new partners quicker.”
Proportunity was also recently selected to join Tech Nation’s Fintech 3.0 cohort. The lender has launched a new intermediaries platform as well.
https://www.bmmagazine.co.uk
Tagged with: BUSINESS NEWS • ECONOMIC NEWS • MAKE MONEY
