OakNorth Bank increases revolving credit facility to RAW Mortgage Fund

By Bridging Loan Directory 18th February 2021

OakNorth Bank – the UK bank powered by OakNorth – has increased an existing facility by £20m with RAW Mortgage Fund, a specialist fund providing buy-to-let property loans against residential real estate in the UK.

Founded in May 2015, the Fund is run by RAW Capital Partners, the Guernsey-based innovative asset management company.

The Fund has completed over 350 loans since launch at an average loan to valuation ratio of only 47%.

Led by Tim Parkes and Richard Avery-Wright, the Fund has been able to provide very consistent returns to investors, provided from the interest payable on mortgage loans, since launch.

It achieved a net return for institutional investors of 4.43% in 2020. The Fund had strong loan book performance throughout 2020, and has a strong pipeline for 2021, despite the ongoing challenges being presented by the pandemic.

It will use the facility from OakNorth Bank to lend ahead of investor subscription and retain headroom for potential redemptions.

Tim Parkes, Managing Director and Lead Fund Manager, RAW Mortgage Fund, said:

“Throughout 2019 and 2020, we made several key hires, including a Head of Distribution, Head of Operations and a CFO – considerably increasing the size and experience of our senior team.

In addition to this, we’ve continued to invest in process automation, adding new functionality that’s helped us maintain our speed and efficiency as we’ve scaled.

We will continue to scale our team and processes in line with the envisaged growth of the Fund and are grateful for OakNorth Bank’s continued support.

Since we completed the initial part of this transaction together, Mo and the team have done several funds finance deals, so their depth and breadth of expertise in this space continues to grow.”

Mohith Sondhi, Senior Director, Debt Finance at OakNorth, added:

“Both Tim and Richard have over 30 years’ experience in financial services and over the last few years, have made strategic investments in both their people and processes.

This experience and investment has clearly paid off as the Fund had strong loan book performance throughout 2020, and has a strong pipeline for 2021, despite the ongoing challenges being presented by COVID-19.

Having provided the Fund with the initial £20m facility two years ago, we saw this as an opportunity to increase our support as the Fund pursues ambitious growth plans with regards to its assets under management.”