About the brokerage
About Bridging Loan Derby
We sit between Derby investors, owner-occupiers and developers and the eight bridging lenders who price the work. Independent of any one funder, packaging biased to whatever moves your deal.
Who we are
We are a specialist bridging brokerage based in the East Midlands, with Derby as our regional centre and the wider Derbyshire property market as our coverage area. Bridging is what we do every working day. Not a side product alongside term mortgages, not a referral relationship we maintain in case a client asks. The whole desk wakes up to auction calendars, refurbishment timelines, and the same eight lender contacts who price our work week in, week out. That focus is the point of working with us rather than a generalist mortgage broker.
How we got here
From single-deal packagers to a Derby specialist desk.
The brokerage grew out of a packaging team that had been arranging short-term property finance for Derbyshire investors since the post-2018 specialist-lender expansion. The shift from a few personal contacts at MT Finance and Together to a settled eight-lender panel happened gradually, as deal volume justified treating bridging as a discipline rather than an occasional product. By 2023 the desk was packaging more bridging loans than any other product line. In 2024 the team split the bridging book out under its own brand to remove confusion with high-street term lending.
Today the Derby desk handles enquiries from auction buyers across DE1 to DE24, owner-occupiers chain-broken between Allestree and Mickleover, BTL landlords running refurbishments across Allenton, Normanton and Sinfin, and developers exiting practical completion in Pride Park and the City Centre. The case mix is roughly two-thirds unregulated investor work, one-third regulated owner-occupier bridges introduced through our FCA-authorised partners.
What we are
A brokerage, not an adviser, and not a lender.
We arrange short-term property finance secured against UK property. We are a broker. We package the case, negotiate terms across the lender panel, and run it through to completion alongside the borrower's solicitor and the lender's legal team. We do not lend our own balance sheet and we do not advise. For regulated bridging, where the loan is secured against a property occupied or to be occupied by the borrower or an immediate family member, we introduce clients to FCA-authorised partners who carry out the regulated activity and provide any required advice. We are not directly FCA-authorised. For unregulated bridging on commercial, investment, BTL and refurbishment property, we package and place the case directly.
That separation matters. A broker who advises has to file recommendations and document why they fit the client's needs. We are not that party. We are the people who know which lender will price your specific deal sharpest this week, which valuers turn around the postcode area fastest, and which legal teams have the auction-pack appetite to complete inside 14 days.
The team
A small desk built around bridging packaging.
The Derby bridging desk is a small team of packagers, case managers and lender liaison staff. The packagers take the case from first triage through to lender offer, sitting between the borrower and the underwriter. The case managers run the file from offer through valuation, legals and drawdown. The lender liaison roles maintain the day-to-day relationships with the eight panel lenders so that pricing, appetite changes and turnaround times stay current. We do not publish individual staff bios on the website; the work product is what matters, not the headshots.
We are members of the broker community that orbits NACFB and FIBA conferences, and we keep current on ASTL lender-market commentary. We do not claim memberships we do not hold. The relationships that actually matter are the ones with the lender credit teams who price our cases, and those are built case by case rather than at trade events.
The lender panel
Eight specialists who cover the bridging map.
We work most regularly with eight bridging specialists: MT Finance, Octane Capital, Roma Finance, United Trust Bank, Hope Capital, Together, LendInvest and Octopus Real Estate. Between them they cover regulated owner-occupier work, standard unregulated bridges, refurbishment to BTL exit, heavy refurb with structural change, development exit, and second-charge cases. Beyond the headline panel we maintain working relationships with Shawbrook, Precise Mortgages, Allica Bank, Bridgebank Capital, Avamore Capital, Glenhawk, Aldermore and Kuflink for cases that price better with them.
We do not claim whole-of-market reach. The panel is curated, with each lender priced and pitched for the case types they handle well. Sending a heavy refurb HMO conversion to a fast-turnaround standard bridger wastes a week. Sending a clean 65% LTV chain-break case to a heavy-refurb specialist wastes basis points. The packaging discipline is matching the case to the right desk first time.
Where we work
Derby, Derbyshire and the wider East Midlands.
The home base is Derby itself. The bulk of our case flow runs through the Cathedral Quarter, City Centre, Allestree, Mickleover, Littleover, Chaddesden, Spondon, Alvaston, Sinfin, Normanton, Darley Abbey and Chellaston. We work the full county across Derbyshire including Chesterfield, Long Eaton, Ilkeston, Swadlincote, Belper, Ripley, Heanor, Alfreton, Matlock, Buxton, Ashbourne and Glossop. Beyond the county boundary we lend across the wider East Midlands region into Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Staffordshire where the deal flow and the lender panel both make sense.
Distance from Derby is rarely the limit on whether we take a case. The limits are the strength of the security, the credibility of the exit, and whether the property type sits inside the bridging lender appetite. Derby's economy carries a heavy industrial-heritage and advanced-manufacturing skew, anchored by Rolls-Royce, Toyota and Alstom plus the wider rail and aerospace supply chain, and that shapes the mix of commercial and mixed-use cases we package alongside the residential book. We turn down work where the exit is hand-waved or the security is thin. We say yes where the deal is real and the numbers work.
Regulatory note
Regulated bridging finance, where the loan is secured against a property occupied or to be occupied by the borrower or an immediate family member, is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Unregulated bridging finance, including loans secured against commercial property, investment property, buy-to-let, and refurbishment projects, is not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. We are not directly FCA-authorised. For any regulated bridging requirement we introduce clients to FCA-authorised partners, who carry out the regulated activity and provide any required advice. We do not give advice on regulated mortgages, regulated bridging, or investment products.
Next step
Talk to a Derby bridging specialist.
A 15-minute triage call usually answers the practical questions: rate band, LTV, term, fees, completion window. Indicative lender terms typically follow inside 24 hours. We are at our most useful when the case has a clock on it.