London Credit has launched a pilot of its development finance offering up to 70% loan to gross development value (LTGDV).

Earlier this year, London Credit recruited Jake McCausland to lead the lender’s planned expansion into development lending, which has commenced its first stage with the pilot.

As part of the pilot, the lender will provide finance on a small number of schemes to refine its lending and service proposition before a controlled launch to the whole broker market.

London Credit currently provides bridging loans from £100,000 to £3.5m on residential, commercial and semi-commercial properties in London, the South East and major cities, with terms from three to 18 months.

Loans can be used for a range of circumstances, including product refurbishment, auction finance and capital raising.

The maximum loan-to-value (LTV) on residential is 75% and on commercial and semi-commercial loans is 65% LTV.

London Credit head of development finance Jake McCausland says: “At London Credit, we understand that development finance is a very specialist area of lending and it’s important to ensure both product and processes are built to meet the specific needs of developers.”

“With this in mind, we are launching in a controlled way to ensure we are completely happy with our proposition before rolling it out more widely. We look forward to the next stage of our launch in the coming months and helping brokers to deliver new funding options to their developer clients.”