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LendInvest completes 'one of its biggest loans yet' with £12m deal for Canary Wharf site

Alternative property lender, LendInvest, has announced it has completed its first loan syndication of a £12m property loan in partnership with Merseyside Pension Fund.

The loan, which is secured against a development site in Canary Wharf, was originated and underwritten by LendInvest and syndicated by the pension fund, with the lender acting as security trustee and loan servicer.

According to the firm, the borrower is looking to gain planning consent to build a new 320-bed budget hotel and 199 residential units at the site in East London, with a decision due sometime this year.

Rod Lockhart, Managing Director of LendInvest Capital, said that the deal, which is one of the biggest ever completed by the company, is part of the lender’s efforts to seek out more co-investments with public sector institutions and hailed the potential returns on property debt in the current economic climate.

He said: “We are delighted to be working with major public sector institutions like MPF which is something that we have built LendInvest to do successfully. Returns from short-term property debt are increasingly attractive to investors in this low interest rate environment.

“We look forward to making co-investments with MPF and other UK pension funds as a regular component of our funding mix.”

The deal marks another property loan for Merseyside Pension Fund, which is advised by CBRE Capital Advisors, with a string of similar deals having been completed in the last 18 months.

Chris Shorrock of CBRE Capital Advisors, the Strategic Advisor to MPF, said: “At the current time we believe that investing into the property debt space provides attractive relative returns compared to direct equity property investments.

“Having an allocation for debt funding in the property portfolio should assist us in outperforming the Fund’s IPD Benchmark.

“We are pleased to have undertaken our first debt syndication with LendInvest and it demonstrates that alternative lenders and institutional investors can team up to achieve attractive returns for their investors.”

Loans of this type are set to become an increasingly important part of LendInvest’s funding mix after the finance business, which originally made its name as a peer-to-peer lender, identified big loans with established borrowers as an area ripe for growth.