I’ve always been entrepreneurial. I started my first company at the age of 17.

Since then, I have built and sold a £120m valuation business, managed over £400m of private capital, completed more than £2bn-worth of secured loans and managed a team of 100-plus staff.

All-round improvement

I founded TAB in 2018. In my previous business, we sold bridging loans. With TAB, I started doing something similar but with better technology, a better team and better products. And, because I have been here before, there haven’t been too many surprises.

I knew, for instance, it would be a challenge to raise capital. Currently, TAB has two ways of funding its bridging business: private investors who select the loans that suit their risk parameters; and institutional funding.

We researched and tested modern approaches to the way property was owned

In the past year, we have acquired three funding lines. Previously, raising capital could be difficult.

Some of our loans can be quirky and complicated. Our underwriters are able to understand the full story — but relaying this information to investors, concisely and in layman’s terms so they understand the risks, is harder.

We adapted to this challenge by expending more effort to educate investors about the loans.

Fractional ownership in property is not a well-trodden path. We had to create robust legal documentation

First, we hired an investor relations manager to deepen our relationships with investors and assist with any questions. And second, we created a dedicated area on our website for education — ‘TAB University’ — where anyone could access a range of free information on property, finance and lending.

The real unknowns came from a different part of the business.

I want to open up real estate investment to the masses via fractional property investments, which enable investors to own property from as little as £1,000 and benefit from the rental yields and capital growth of the UK property market.

We created a dedicated area on our website where anyone could access free information on property, finance and lending

One of the biggest challenges in launching this product has been creating an ownership structure for property that meets UK regulatory standards. I knew it wouldn’t be a cakewalk. But I didn’t expect it to be quite this hard.

Robust documentation

Fractional ownership in property is not a well-trodden path. We had to create robust legal documentation to enable TAB to offer this product.

The process was time consuming, expensive and complicated. Not only that but I had to manage the process alongside running a successful bridging business.

I started doing something similar but with better technology, a better team and better products

To meet the challenge we needed to think outside the box. Alongside an experienced legal team, we had to research and test modern approaches to the way property was owned.

We developed several scenarios in which we could test against the regulatory landscape and, ultimately, we were able to build a structure that fitted within the constraints.