A specialist development-lending venture that originates, underwrites and manages high-quality PD / conversion loans for experienced developers — and hands its capital partners a secured, hurdle-protected return that scales.
Redbourne Capital is an asset-light, fund-manager lending business: we bring proprietary origination, instant underwriting and a specialist product; our capital partners bring the balance sheet. The first partner is Castle Trust; the model is repeatable.
The UK's specialist-lending market has a structural inefficiency: lenders write short-term development and bridging loans, then lose the refinance to a competitor the moment they redeem. They originate manually, underwrite slowly, and monitor blind. Meanwhile a wave of newly-capitalised, PE-backed lenders — Castle Trust among them, following the Sixth Street / Bayview investment — hold a clear mandate to deploy at scale without loosening on risk.
Redbourne solves both. Powered by GUMO — a platform reconciling 18M+ UK companies with their charges, directors, land titles and properties — we find the deals, underwrite them in minutes, and retain the borrower from day-one funding through to the term take-out. Our product is deliberately narrow and defensible: PD / conversion schemes for experienced developers.
The team has facilitated over £500M of development loans and managed £200M+ of client drawdowns over a decade, and has built GUMO over six years with £600K of the founder's own capital, distilling 35 years of lending judgement into a system. This is not a data start-up; it is an experienced development-finance operator with a proprietary engine.
The ask: a pilot capital allocation from Castle Trust into the conversion product, on a fund-manager basis — a preferred hurdle plus a majority share of the upside for Castle Trust, arrangement fees, carry and a modest management fee for Redbourne — scaling to the three-year plan.
UK development and bridging finance is a multi-billion-pound specialist market served by dozens of banks, challengers and debt funds. It is relationship- and broker-led, data-poor and slow: origination is manual, underwriting takes weeks, and monitoring of the live book is largely reactive.
Permitted-development and change-of-use conversions — office- and commercial-to-residential in particular — are a policy-supported, high-velocity segment favoured by experienced developers: shorter programmes, planning certainty via prior approval, and strong residential exit demand. It is precisely the slice where speed of funding and quality of underwriting win the deal — and where Redbourne concentrates.
Lenders systematically lose their redeemed book. Using GUMO we analysed Castle Trust's own registered charges: of the loans that have redeemed, ~85% were refinanced by another lender — the OneSavings / OSB group alone taking ~70, with Shawbrook and Hampshire Trust ~27 each. Short-term money matures onto term BTL with a rival. That refinance is exactly what Redbourne's term take-out is built to retain.
Redbourne Capital is a fund-manager lending platform. It does not need its own balance sheet: it originates, underwrites, structures, manages and monitors loans on behalf of capital partners, taking fees and a share of the return. It is asset-light, scalable, and its economics improve with volume.
Its edge is the combination of an experienced development-finance team (from Hank Zarihs Associates) and a proprietary technology platform (GUMO). Most lenders have one or the other; Redbourne runs both as a single origination-to-monitoring pipeline.
One unique, defensible product: day-one funding and the term take-out on PD / conversion schemes for experienced developers — so the borrower never has to leave.
Beyond the flagship conversion product, Redbourne runs a separate, lower-margin funding line for clearing-bank-quality borrowers on completed residential, semi-commercial and commercial buildings — a distinct mandate matched to lower-cost capital, on which Redbourne retains all fees:
GUMO reconciles the UK's public property and company record into one graph — 18M+ companies matched to their directors, charges, land titles, properties, financials and adverse events, re-scored nightly. It powers Redbourne end-to-end:
Redbourne originates from three reinforcing channels: (1) GUMO-sourced opportunities (maturing loans and conversion schemes identified in the data); (2) HZA's established broker and developer relationships and direct outreach; and (3) repeat experienced-developer clients. Deals are exclusive to the partner's book — no leakage to competitors.
Redbourne operates on a fund-manager basis: the capital partner provides the balance sheet and earns a preferred return; Redbourne originates, underwrites, manages and monitors, earning fees and carry. Castle Trust is the first partner; the structure is designed to be repeatable across multiple partners (and, in time, a managed fund).
| Term | Structure |
|---|---|
| Capital partner return | Preferred hurdle — 7% bridging · 6% term |
| Security | Redbourne holds the first legal charge (lender of record); partner takes a sub-charge + floating debenture over Redbourne & the book |
| Margin above hurdle | Split with Redbourne on a volume-tiered carry ladder |
| Carry ladder (partner : Redbourne) | ≤£250M 80/20 · £250–750M 70/30 · £750M+ 60/40 |
| Arrangement fees | To Redbourne (manager) |
| Management fee | 0.5% of book p.a., quarterly in advance (vs ~2% typical) |
The tiered carry aligns Redbourne with the partner's growth mandate — our share rises only as we deploy more of their capital profitably.
An experienced development-monitoring credit team, an established external QS network for on-the-ground oversight, and a founder with 35 years in the market who has invested £600K over six years building the platform. Redbourne pairs seasoned credit judgement with a systematised, scalable engine.
A disciplined ramp: grow the standing book £250M a year to £750M by year three — roughly £1.25bn written as the bridging recycles. Redbourne earns three complementary revenue lines; the partner's return grows in absolute terms at every step.
| Illustrative, £/yr | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standing book | £250M | £500M | £750M |
| Carry tier (partner : RB) | 80/20 | 70/30 | 60/40 |
| Capital-partner return | £21.3M | £41.4M | £60.3M |
| — effective yield on capital | 8.5% | 8.3% | 8.0% |
| Redbourne — management fee | £1.25M | £2.5M | £3.75M |
| Redbourne — arrangement fees | £3.75M | £7.5M | £11.25M |
| Redbourne — carry | £1.2M | £3.6M | £7.2M |
| Redbourne total / yr | £6.2M | £13.6M | £22.2M |
Three revenue lines give Redbourne a resilient mix: recurring management fee on AUM, transactional arrangement fees on originations, and performance carry on the margin above the partner's hurdle. Over the three years the partner earns c.£123M on its deployed capital while Redbourne builds to a c.£22M annual run-rate.
Illustrative, on stated assumptions (blended borrower rates ~10% bridging / 7.5% term; hurdles 7% / 6%; arrangement fees 2% / 1.5%; 60/40 bridge/term mix; 0.5% management fee). Rates should be set to the partner's actual pricing and cost of funds; a live interactive model accompanies this plan. Not a forecast of guaranteed returns.