Clearwell Capital
Case study
Clearwell Capital
“I would recommend Conister as a flexible lending partner to smaller lenders looking for asset finance facilities of up to £5m.”
Ed Marley-Shaw,
CEO, Clearwell
Clearwell was founded in 2013 and provides funding to small and medium property developers in the UK. Clearwell specialises in customer service providing speedy tailored solutions to an underbanked section of the UK economy. The company generally targets mezzanine lending, providing additional funding behind a senior lender.
63 loans
made to small and medium sized developers
621
residential properties construction funded
£200m
of development value created
Challenge
Type of product: WFA
The need for a flexible drawdown facility
The Partner will be requested to provide a number of satisfactory documents to Conister which constitute the precedent conditions to be met before the agreement goes live.
Looking for a less conservative approach
Clearwell found that other banks had previously been somewhat conservative with respect to their product, due to a lack of understanding regarding the underlying low risk levels.
Research needed
Development finance was a new product for Conister and Clearwell had to do some work to get us comfortable with the fact that development projects often over run. After this analysis we recognised that well underwritten mezzanine lending at sensible LTVs presented a robust investment case.
Solution
A proactive approach
Our credit team was very proactive in seeking to better understand how Clearwell’s product works – and work towards getting comfortable with maintaining support for schemes that, although they may be experiencing delays, are otherwise robust from a risk perspective.
Support during lockdown
Despite the very uncertain environment during the COVID-19 pandemic, Conister has been supportive of Clearwell and recently agreed a number of individual loan extensions on schemes where property sales have been delayed due to lockdown, all of which were subsequently repaid.
Progressing acceptance criteria
Given the positive performance data, Conister is working with Clearwell to amend our acceptance criteria so that the majority of their lending is eligible for funding without individual loan by loan review. We are confident, given our proactive approach to understanding Clearwell’s business, that we are well on the way to getting there on this point.
Website: www.clearwellcapital.co.uk