CapitalRise boosts growth with two new appointments

CapitalRise, the specialist prime property finance provider, has announced today that it has made two key hires to expand its lending team with a third expected to be announced later this month. Since launching in 2016, CapitalRise has grown at pace and is still the only alternative finance provider solely dedicated to the Prime property space. CapitalRise has now lent against over £370m of prime real estate assets in Prime London and the Home Counties and has seen huge demand for finance, having screened over £3.3 billion in loan applications in 2019 alone.

Barney Iles joins as Associate Director of Lending and will be responsible for originating and managing broker and borrower relationships. Barney joins from Octopus Real Estate, where his role as Origination Manager built on his extensive knowledge and experience of the real estate market, having previously worked on a wide variety of real estate funding projects in roles at Ingenious Real Estate and Nationwide Building Society.

Heather McKenzie joins as a Credit Analyst and will be responsible for loan analysis and borrower due diligence. Heather joins from NYC-based CIT Group where she was responsible for leveraged finance origination, underwriting and portfolio management. Her strong due diligence experience adds significant value to our growing credit underwriting team.

CapitalRise CEO and Co-Founder, Uma Rajah, comments: “We are very excited to welcome Barney and Heather to CapitalRise. They both have an impressive depth of knowledge and experience which will strengthen the team as we continue to grow. Having secured over £50m of additional funding lines last year and with term sheets agreed for even larger lines, they will play an important role in ensuring we deploy this capital prudently, into the right projects with the right borrowers. We continue to see huge demand for our stretched senior and mezzanine development and sales period loans and have seen transaction flow increase significantly since December’s election result helped to relieve uncertainty and pressure on the prime market.”

Barney Iles comments; “It’s an exciting time to join the CapitalRise team and help build on the huge growth they saw last year. With a bespoke and flexible approach to prime property finance, I believe that CapitalRise is uniquely positioned to grow market presence and become the go-to lender for prime developers over the coming year.”