Tuesday October 17th, 2023 -
For this week’s coffee break, we spoke to Dan Austin, Co-founder and CEO of ASK Partners.
ASK Partners is a boutique, specialist property lender who provide bespoke funding solutions for the real estate sector. It’s funded an impressive range of high-value projects across residential, commercial and mixed-use units since its inception in 2016.
ASK Partners has now enabled over £1.4bn of lending through its ‘wealthtech’ platform, where institutional partners, family offices and high net-worth individuals can buy into real estate loans. This unique approach to lending and its wide focus on property ventures is why we’ve partnered with ASK Partners on 45 joint loans over the years before acquiring a 50% stake in the company in 2022.
Dan spoke to us about ASK’s growth strategy, how they decide on their next projects and the impact of their charity work.
Can you describe ASK Partners in a nutshell?
ASK is a specialist property lender with a unique funding pool of high-net-worth private clients who invest in our loans on a self-select basis through a digital platform.
How does ASK Partners differ from its competitors?
We launched with the backing of a cornerstone investor, an ultra-high-net-worth family office which specialised in real estate, to enable us to close loans with certainty for underlying borrowers. However, our key aim was to build a funding base of individual high net worth investors and family offices looking to make the risk-adjusted returns we knew we could achieve. This would also give us a unique and varied source of capital, creating the flexibility we needed to invest in a wide range of opportunities. This was where we knew we were different. Traditionally, private banks and asset managers follow a fund model limited to one sector, which imposes fees, and doesn’t allow investors individual choice. We wanted to be able to offer sophisticated high-net-worth investors the chance to cherry-pick transactions from a broad spectrum of opportunities, in line with their risk profile and diversification preferences, and for them to be able to do this online through a bespoke digital platform.
How has ASK Partners grown over the years?
The private client part of the business has grown very organically through referrals and word of mouth. We now have over 350 individuals and family offices investing in our transactions and aim to continue to grow this in line with the expected increase in our transaction volume. We have invested a lot in our digital platform, which provides full briefing papers on each transaction and regular updates to investors but also allows them to fully manage their portfolio online, including an interest calculator, tax planning tool and a secondary market for buying in and out of transactions. In a recent survey of our private clients, 95% said they have already or would be happy to refer ASK to a friend or colleague, which is a good testament to the hard work our team puts in to ensure excellent service, especially as many people don’t like to make financially-related recommendations to friends for obvious reasons.
Regarding our financial growth, we set out to grow cautiously and organically. This meant that our headcount and overheads only grew as the company’s level of operations grew and once we had proved our business model. By not being under pressure to deploy capital and not concentrating on a specific real estate sector, we were able to focus on the critical aspect of finding the right deals, working with the right borrowers and lending against the right assets. This takes a lot of hard work, and we are rigorous in our due diligence processes, but we have now written over £1.4 billion of property loans across over 110 transactions with zero loss and have a current loan book of over £0.75 billion.
How did the pandemic impact the business?
Not long after we set up ASK, we were faced with Brexit, followed by Covid and, more recently, some challenging changes at a government level, high interest rates and inflation. We’ve certainly had to learn to react to a moving market. However, these macro-economic impacts have provided many of our investment opportunities. Traditional banks and funds were forced to offload assets, which flooded the market with additional stock. On top of that, the way that the pandemic has changed the way that we live, work and spend our leisure time has also provided us with opportunities. Demand for the built environment is always changing and we want to fund the buildings and projects that are most aligned with current market requirements.
How has the work of ASK Partners helped to address a nationwide shortage of housing?
Many of our loans are to provide creative developers with financing to repurpose commercial properties into residential housing. This is a key component of tackling the housing crisis, as building from scratch on brownfield sites is fraught with objection and planning hurdles whereas there are many redundant buildings ready to be converted into much-needed homes more quickly, efficiently and with less of an environmental impact. To date, we have supported our clients with finance that has assisted in bringing forward a total of 12,000 new homes, either through the planning phase, via conversion or ground up construction, or following completion.
As a boutique property lender how, does ASK Partners decide who to fund?
The sponsors in our loans are crucial. We always seek well-capitalised borrowers with a strong track record and a sound business plan. Our due diligence processes are rigorous and it’s not all about who we lend to but what the security is, too. Everything needs to stack up.
What has been the transaction you have been most proud of over the years, and why?
We worked very hard to complete a complicated loan against a site at King’s Cross. At the time, it was one of the larger loans we had done, and it felt like a significant milestone for the business. We also completed a couple of loans at the height of the national lockdown for COVID-19. It felt good to be helping customers out when other lenders had essentially shut up shop.
Can you tell us about some of the charity work ASK Partners is doing?
We’ve supported Bloomsbury Football since 2018. Bloomsbury Football is a grassroots charity bringing the beautiful game to children from all walks of life around London. It was always important to us at ASK to develop a culture of giving something back. Working with Bloomsbury is great for involving staff in matches and tournaments as it is local and has a local community impact. It has been amazing to watch their success. They now support 5,000 young people aged 3-18 a week in their football camps. Of those 5,000, 60% are from a minority ethnic background, and 35% have an annual household income of less than £7,400. Their target is to get to 20,000 children a week in areas of high deprivation by 2028. I don’t doubt they will achieve that, and we will keep funding the work they are doing. It is astounding to see the impact that being part of this football club can have on the well-being and life chances of these kids.
Where do you see ASK Partners going next?
Having secured the backing of OakNorth Bank with the sale of 50% of our shares last year, we are looking to strengthen that partnership, enabling us to offer a greater range of finance options and investment opportunities to our private clients. As ever, we will remain flexible to the economic situation and our clients’ requirements.
At the moment, we are looking at providing more lower risk and return opportunities to meet current investor sentiment. We’re continuing to invest heavily in our technology platform to provide a best-in-class offering. Wealth-tech as it is often now called, is an emerging sector and with seven successful years in business we are in a very strong position to lead the way.
How do interested investors sign up with ASK?
We’re always looking for like-minded investors who would like access to self-select secured lending opportunities. A number of our private clients used to lend directly on projects but now opt to utilise our platform due to the ease and the level of service we and our bespoke investor portal provides. We offer a streamlined electronic onboarding process combined with a personal service – Belinda, who heads up our investor relations, is always available to chat to interested investors and to explain the process. In the first instance an email should be sent to [email protected], and you will receive a call back.