The Five Minute Interview with Louis Alexander, Managing Director, BridgeCrowd

By Tony Sanchez 23rd January 2018

BridgeCrowd, the social way to borrow and lend.

Their experienced team have been lending and processing bridging loans for a combined 20+ years and come from a variety of financial and legal backgrounds.

We speak to managing director, Louis Alexander:

What is the best thing about being in the bridging finance business?

The best thing is that we help people! We are in a unique position – we help borrowers get finance that they deserve but can not get elsewhere from other finance providers and also we help investors directly get a secured return that they can get from other finance providers.

Meaning we help all ends of the finance spectrum.

What keeps you focused?

The constant changing nature of the industry always means that I keep up to date with latest avenues for finance.

What qualities do you look for in your employees or colleagues?

In the main we look for trust, hardworking and reliability and be able to have a laugh.

Often it is about personal relationships so we like our team to be able to be themselves and build a relationship with the brokers and customers.

Are you an optimist or a pessimist?

Both – so I guest that makes me a realist?

What did you want to be as a child?

A barrister. Which I also am.

What will be the greatest challenge facing the bridging finance industry in the coming months?

A compression in rates continues to occur which is great for the those borrowing, but the lenders must be able to lend at these lower rates or face riskier deals to maintain profit margins.

With riskier deals comes riskier books and bad debts.

Who or what makes you laugh?

Without sounding corny, most of our team do on a daily basis.

Do you dread Monday mornings?

No I love them. We have a meeting and run through all the live cases and it sets up our week, so we actually look forward to it.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

My love of chocolate sweets at about 3pm. I am known to raid my teams desk for cookies, sweets and other anti-thinning treats

With whom would you most like to have dinner?

Oooh tough one….I am assuming that my wife reads this, so I better bear that in mind. I would probably opt for Winston Churchill after recently watching the Netflix series, Crown.