Anastasia Ttofis: Embracing a legal revolution

By David Craik 29th August 2024

Being hugged by strangers may not be to everyone’s taste but when those people are lenders, brokers, developers and investors wanting to thank you for a ‘much-needed revolution’ of the sector’s legal processes then it is probably worth it.

Such random acts of excitement have become quite the norm for Anastasia Ttofis, chief executive and co-founder of specialist property finance law firm iLA, since it launched in March 2022 to ‘revolutionise independent legal advice’ in the sector and fix the frustrations of thousands of developers trying and sometimes failing to get deals over the line in time.

It is the UK’s only SRA Authorised Law Firm specialising exclusively in finance and property Independent Legal Advice.

“When we go to industry events, we get a lot of people coming over to us, embracing us and saying thank you,” she says.

“People really value what we have done which is so humbling. We wanted to break through the mould and find a solution to a real and pressing problem.”

She, and co-founder Luke Baldwin, learned about the challenges with ILA in the bridging sector as part of their previous roles as banking and finance lawyers.

“We’d often get calls from clients or broker contacts saying they had called up 20 law firms trying to get ILA but that nobody would do it making it an absolute nightmare to complete deals,” Ttofis explains.

“One of the problems putting some lawyers off from offering was the increasing risk of breaching their professional indemnity insurance.

ILA can be seen as high risk and low reward because you are stepping in to advise on a snapshot of a wider transaction and taking the wider liability for that facility.

As such solicitors were either charging very high fees to do it or it was being carried out by those with wills, probate or trust experience to pick up an extra bit of fee.”

Their solution was iLA which from its base in Poole, Dorset offers a sole focus on ILA for a range of financial sectors such as bridging and development, third party legal charge and equity release.

It is almost 100% an online service utilising e- signatures for its terms of business, an encrypted digital identity verification tool when onboarding clients and 30 minutes long ILA advice meetings.

“Apart from our expertise in solving iLA cases one of the main factors in our favour was when ILA went online during the Covid pandemic.

Prior to that it could only be done in person,” Ttofis explains. “By being online it meant that we could build a specialist ILA business which could in theory target the whole country if not the world.

We offer online client appointments to developers and investors between 8am and 8pm because developers don’t work 9 to 5, seven days a week.

We can complete within a couple of hours. Cases are not sat on piles of papers. We want to close the files down as soon as and effectively as possible.”

Its biggest source of work comes from brokers and increasingly lenders. Indeed, iLA offers a partnership service including dedicated branded booking platforms, exclusive discounts and expedited appointment times for partner lenders and brokers.

“The process must remain independent in that a lender can’t recommend us to a client. They must be free to choose,” Ttofis explains.

“What they can say is that although they are not required to come to us there is a dedicated ILA firm available should they wish and here is the booking platform. We have around 30 of these partnerships at present.”

These include Keystone and more recently loans brokerage firm Loans Warehouse.

Ttofis adds that it currently receives work from ‘hundreds of brokers and lenders’ mainly in the UK but also increasingly internationally with the business going from ‘strength to strength’ since launch growing to a seven-figure turnover and a team of 12.

As such it has built a huge database of 4,500 property developers, lenders, solicitors and brokers detailing the exact ILA requirements of each and every one.

“ILA is something which is relatively easy to provide but it is hard in the sense that you need to get it signed and witnessed correctly or it can be rejected,” she says.

“We have a spreadsheet of lenders each with their own requirements such as needing an ID for witness in a video call.

Other law firms can go wrong on these points as there are a lot of nuances. It is our business to know this and get it right every time.”

The team are also pretty adept at thinking on their feet. It recently provided ILA for an €11 million loan for a prestigious high-net-worth client in just 24 hours.

This was despite an issue regarding the Governing Law and Jurisdiction of the Guarantee, set to the Law of Guernsey due to the lender, Tenn Capital, being Guernsey-based.

iLA successfully advocated for the security documents to be governed by the laws of England & Wales.

International expansion is one of the group’s future aims. It is already carrying out work for clients as far apart as Malta, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Dubai but it aims to ‘actively start marketing’ overseas in the next couple of years.

“In terms of our database it could reach 40,000 within the next five years. That would be a continued recognition that what we have built is what was needed in the industry,” Ttofis adds.

“Our biggest problem is people knowing about us. We are picking up this work without a marketing team. We are only scratching the surface.”

Ttofis has exciting plans to both get their name known more widely and to take advantage of their growing database by again revolutionising events in the specialist property finance sector.

“The data is a real value to us with so many industry names and contacts,” she says. “We may start running online community groups or events where we can get everyone together to share ideas and do business. Our partners could sponsor them. It could be invaluable to the industry and us as well.”

Ttofis who describes herself as ‘not your typical legal professional’ doesn’t want those events to be standard fare.

“I’m not that interested in standing around with a glass of prosecco in my hand. That’s not my style,” she says.

“They could be arts or music festivals with live bands, wellness talks and yoga classes to help people focus on their mental health.

We want them to be fun so it could be investors taking part in a ‘Hook-a-Duck’ with lenders where they have to answer a question on the bottom of the duck!“

iLA has certainly caught the imagination of the industry already.

“We want to help our partners and clients make the last step and get their deals completed,” she says.

“It’s been a volatile time for everyone in the last couple of years and we are here to make life easier and get business moving.”