Saving Stream’s Liam Brooke talks with Orca

Saving Stream, founded in 2013, matches investors with property borrowers. These borrowers seek to develop and refurbish property, as well as acquire private and commercial property. Saving Stream offer a high-interest rate of 12% per annum, allowing investors to lend a minimum of £100, manually selecting the property projects they wish to invest in, and for how long.

Founders Liam Brooke and Tim Gordon attribute the success of their growing marketplace lender to the simplicity of their platform, their track record and the protection they afford their investors. Saving Stream, to-date, has not lost a penny of investor’ funds. Saving Stream has lent over £100m and is expanding its team to continue the successes they’ve seen in recent years.

OM: How did you conceive Saving Stream, where did the idea originate from?

LB: Well, I come from a Banking background, Tim (Gordon), who is a friend (co-founder) from Portsmouth was in e-commerce and whilst we were looking out over the water from a royal naval club one sunny evening, watching the yachts go by we thought to ourselves, what can we lend money on? I know, yachts.

OM: What was it like for Saving Stream in the beginning?

LB: We started with yachts on day one. The banks and investors laughed in our faces, even though we were offering rates of 4% a month, so we decided to build our own platform and list yacht loans!

OM: Was it a roaring success from the off?

LB: In year one we recycled £200k into £2m and had 500 investors. But, the model wasn’t exactly scalable so we ventured into property. We attracted 1500 investors making loans in the region £500,000 — £15m and last year (2015) we cleared around £70m in lent funds.

OM: So what is the sweet spot loan?

LB: Well we actively market to £1–5m loans, this keeps borrowers happy and gives us scalability and importantly manageability. We were a two-man team after all! In saying that we are expecting to lend to loans in the region £25m. These are less risky. We now have 7 people working in the team full time and a few more on the way.

OM: People seem to love the Saving Stream platform, why do you think that is the case?

LB: Our key to success lies in our responsiveness, not losing money which is a good thing and the simplicity we offer. Even if it’s at the expense of profit we do nothing complicated or unnecessary. Our business value comes from the attention we give to our stakeholders, that being a simple and reliable service.

OM: What sort of protection do you offer investors?

LB: Well our Provision Fund covers any shortfalls from loan repayments. It covers 2% of our loan book at any given time and currently stands at c£2m. The thing is, Saving Stream will never have 100% loss as we take asset security on our lending. We will sell a borrower’s asset, which will be worth more than the loan, if they default so we can repay our lenders.