There’s more to bridging than your speed dial

Having been around the block in specialist lending, I know there’s a good reason brokers tend to stick with lenders they’ve used before. When you’re recommending somebody to a client, you’re putting your own reputation behind that recommendation, and you want to be reasonably certain the transaction is going to get over the line.

And I completely understand that. If you’ve spent years building a reputation with your clients, you’re hardly going to put it at risk just because another lender has appeared with a slightly more attractive proposition.

But I’d question whether familiarity always tells you as much about a lender as you think it does. Because knowing somebody will answer the phone is one thing; knowing they can deliver on a transaction is quite another.

Familiarity isn’t the same as certainty

Brokers tend to have long memories, particularly when something hasn’t gone quite to plan. A lender that couldn’t accommodate a particular transaction several years ago can find itself remembered for that decision long after its appetite has changed.

That’s understandable, but it can also mean brokers are working with an outdated impression of what’s available. Lending businesses develop their underwriting capabilities as they become more established, and a transaction that once sat outside their criteria might now be well within their comfort zone.

The difficulty is that brokers don’t necessarily have the time to keep revisiting every lender’s proposition. When you’re busy trying to get cases completed, there’s a natural tendency to work with the people you already know.

The real test comes after the initial conversation

Smart Money People’s H1 2026 Mortgage Lender Benchmark shows why those established relationships are so valuable. Bridging and commercial lenders achieved a people-related sentiment score of 92.3, compared with just 52.6 for processes.

That’s quite a gap, and I think it says a lot about the difference between having a helpful person at the end of the phone and having a lending operation that can support what they’re promising. A broker can have a fantastic relationship with their BDM, but if the underwriting process subsequently becomes difficult, it’s the broker who has to explain that to their client.

And that’s where lenders need to be particularly careful. There’s no great benefit in telling somebody you can fund their case next week if you haven’t established whether the transaction actually works.

It might make for a pleasant phone call, but I doubt the broker will be thanking you a fortnight later. At Inspired Lending, we’re fortunate that our funding structure gives us considerable control over how we approach transactions.

We’re privately funded by the Pears family, and because we don’t have credit committees or third-party funding line restrictions to work around, we can make decisions based on the circumstances of the case in front of us.

That doesn’t mean every transaction is going to work, of course. But it does mean we can have a proper discussion about what’s achievable without having to worry about whether the deal fits somebody else’s funding requirements.

A lender’s proposition should be easy to understand

Of course, brokers can only make informed decisions about lenders if they have access to accurate information about what those lenders are prepared to do. And I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect somebody to spend half their working day ringing around to establish whether a transaction fits.

That’s one of the reasons we’ve recently made Inspired Lending’s criteria available through Knowledge Bank. It gives brokers a straightforward way to understand our lending appetite and identify where our approach to underwriting could be suitable for their clients.

Our recent appointment as an NACFB patron is another important development for the business. We’ve established strong relationships across the specialist finance market, and working more closely with the association gives us further opportunities to share our expertise with commercial finance brokers.

Give the transaction the final say

I’m certainly not suggesting brokers should abandon lenders they’ve worked with successfully for years. Those relationships have been earned, and there’s considerable value in knowing how somebody operates when a completion deadline is approaching.

But I’d encourage brokers to judge lenders on what they can deliver today rather than relying entirely on past experience. Because ultimately, your client isn’t particularly concerned about who’s on your speed dial; they want to know the finance will be there when they need it.