Somo celebrates most successful year to date and announces goals for 2023
Specialist lending firm Somo Bridging has announced that 2022 was its most successful year to date with November 2022 its busiest month for deals since business began.
The firm’s loan book at the end of 2022 stands at over £254m with zero capital losses and despite the volatile economic climate, it has seen 20% growth over the year. Such is the requirement for alternative lending that Somo experienced a 500% spike in business enquiries in October.
Thanks to its Black Friday promotion, Somo celebrated its busiest month ever in November 2022. The offer gave borrowers a massive 90% refund on valuation costs and led to a 400% increase in deals of an average day for the company.
During the year, Somo’s former business development manager, Jade Keval, was promoted to sales director after five years with the business. Jade led Somo in hitting its target lend in 2022 with their flagship product Valuation Only TM and market leading Second Charge product, which allow for almost any borrower profile, circumstance and scenario.
To support business growth, Somo also increased its team by 40% in 2022 and has ambitions to grow it further in 2023. Senior appointments this year included Lindsey O’Neill as its in-house talent acquisition partner, Laurel Livesey as an underwriter, Rachel Killeen as valuations manager, Greg Applewhaite and Duncan Winsland as relationship directors and, most recently, Nicola Hardy and Sarah Kirk as senior relationship directors, to name a few.
Somo’s famous offers are designed to give back to the borrower and support brokers in getting deals over the line, and were also instrumental in helping the lender reaching its targets. Aside from its Black Friday deal, in March, the lender offered free legal fees up to £2,000 (paying out over £25,000 on behalf of its borrowers in total). There was further success for the lender in June when Somo launched its first month repayment ‘interest free’ promotion, an offering to support it’s borrowers further during a difficult year.
Louis Alexander, founder and CEO at Somo said: “Despite the economic turbulence we all experienced in 2022, thanks to the hard work and expertise of the Somo team, we’ve had an exceptional year. We achieved completion rates of 21% above the industry average and are confident we will maintain steady growth in 2023.
“It has always been our mission to get a deal completed swiftly, simply and safely and we’ve been able to achieve this thanks to market-leading products, seasoned bridging specialists, human-touch client service and multiple funding lines that allow us to complete on a wide variety of loan scenarios. Underpinning all of this is a talented, experienced underwriting team that ensures if a deal can complete, Somo will find a way to do it.
“As interest rates keep rising, we lead the way in the alternative lending sector and will continue ensuring borrowers reap the benefits of real life decisions being made based on common sense commercial lending. As more and more borrowers hit brick walls thrown up by traditional high street banks, we’re confident our business will thrive and we’ll find lending solutions for virtually any business need going forward.”
In 2023, Somo will launch a personal and business Insolvency and Bankruptcy product, serviced by in-house insolvency specialists. In addition, Somo aims to grow relationships with networks and packagers to ensure it continues to go from strength-to-strength.
Louis concludes: “We have helped many people through a rocky year and we look forward to helping many more in 2023.”